


Limerence

by Valinde (Valyria)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Dean, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Doctor Dean Winchester, Dubious Consent, Everyone Is Alive, Explicit Sexual Content, Fake Marriage, Infidelity, Jealous Dean, Jealousy, Knotting, M/M, Marking, Marriage of Convenience, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Melodrama, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Mpreg, Mutual Pining, Omega Castiel, POV Alternating, Scenting, Unrequited Balthazar/Castiel, basically a soap opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 23:28:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2670359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valyria/pseuds/Valinde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Emergency Department is the last place Dean expected to find his mate, but over the stink of blood he picks up something else, something sweet, and it hooks into him. Pulls. Something stirs at the base of his skull as the most primitive part of Dean - the part that's <em>alpha</em> - wakes up and takes note.</p>
<p><em>That’s mine,</em> it tells him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Pax Dracona](http://scribblyscratch.tumblr.com/post/103588383511/whoops-was-a-little-early-yesterday-so-repost) is the artist behind the lovely art illustrating this fic.
> 
> ***This is really over the top melodrama with soap opera levels of angst and miscommunication.***
> 
>   
> If you're worried by the tags, click the link below and read the spoilery notes at the bottom for more details.
> 
> Thank you to the [assbabies](http://omeganetwork.tumblr.com/) for reading through the first draft of this months ago, and to Etienne for betaing, (Any lingering typos are mine).
> 
> EDIT : _Please_ don't add this to goodreads!

 

 

 

Dean’s thought about how he might meet his mate.

Their eyes meeting across a crowded bar or a busy sidewalk. Brushing fingers with a perfect-smelling stranger as they reach for the same thing at the grocery store. Maybe a new barista at his favorite coffee shop, their eyes lighting up in realization as they pass Dean his coffee. A beautiful new neighbor moving in next door. A waitress when he’s eating dinner. The person sat next to him on a plane ride back to Kansas to visit his parents.

Idle little fantasies that slip into his daily routine when’s he’s bored or lonely.

Dean doesn’t give them much thought. He devotes more energy to the plots of his favorite TV shows.

When he thinks about it, the person in his little daydreams – his mate – is nebulous and shifting, a cipher for a face he doesn’t know yet, and the scenarios themselves are pretty boring - simple clichés he doesn’t put much effort into. His mate’s a man, a woman, an omega, a beta – the details shift constantly. Because it’s not what his mate might look like or how they could meet Dean wonders about, it’s the _feeling._ That’s what he daydreams about - how it would feel to meet someone and just _know_ on some deep instinctual level, to recognize a perfect stranger as someone so important to you, as your mate, as _family_. It’s hard to wrap his head around.

So Dean’s not really into to all that rom-com love-at-first-sight/scent-mating/true-love crap from the movies… But yeah, like anyone who’s unattached... He’s _wondered._ He’s curious. And he knows there’s _some_ truth to it. Medically speaking the hormones and chemical changes of mating can be measured. _Something_ happens. Sam says meeting Jess was a physical shock that left him breathless like the drop on a rollercoaster. His mom tells a similar story about meeting his dad.

But for all his daydreaming, Dean never thought he’d find his mate at work. (Well, apart from the occasional Dr Sexy inspired fantasy about finding his very own Dr Piccolo, but those were just sleep-deprived jerk-off material.)

So finding a mate is the last thing on his mind at 03.45am when that’s exactly what happens.

It’s halfway through his shift and he’s suturing a gash on a drunk frat boy’s head. His stomach’s gurgling and he’s wondering if he needs to buy groceries on the way home later or if there’s still left overs in the fridge he can heat up. Then the EMTs bring in a new patient and Dean’s bumped from patching up drunk college students to something a little more challenging.

It’s a car accident.

Since it’s Saturday night, well Sunday morning, Dean assumes it was a drunk driver. It usually is. Hopefully the person on the stretcher was wearing a seatbelt. Nothing’s as depressing as someone with their skull split open because they were too lazy to buckle up.

He’s listening to Dr Barnes bark out orders as he and Jo follow her lead and try to stabilize the patient. Dean takes in his details as he checks his injuries, but it’s an impersonal once-over, just a general impression. Caucasian, male, mid-twenties. Dark hair and the sort of slim build that implies he probably jogs or maybe goes to the gym.

So young and healthy - good news - just what Dean likes in a patient.

His shirt is gone, cut off by the paramedics, and there are nasty lacerations on his arms - from glass by the look of them, but Dean’s seen jagged plastic from car interiors tear people up pretty good too. A thick red welt cuts diagonally across his chest, already blossoming into what will be a nasty bruise from his seatbelt.

More good news - he was wearing one.

The patient’s right arm has a compound fracture, but apart from blood loss and a probable concussion, he’s not looking too bad. He’s in shock though, thrashing on the gurney and yelling and moaning wordlessly, stinking of fear, no idea where he is or what’s happening.

Dean’s leaning over the end of the gurney, making eye contact and trying to calm the guy down so Jo can hook up his IV _(“It’s okay, you’re in hospital. You were in a car accident,”)_ when it happens.

Over the stink of blood and panic, Dean picks up something else, something sweet, and it hooks into him. Pulls. Something stirs at the base of his skull as the most primitivepart of Dean - the part that’s _alpha -_ wakes up and takes note.

_That’s mine,_ it tells him.

The guy – Dean’s _mate_ – has stopped his thrashing, gone utterly still, and is staring up at Dean with enormous blue eyes. He’s pale from blood loss and there’s a darkening bruise and swelling along the left side of his face, (probably from where he hit an airbag), but Dean’s struck stupid by how fucking _beautiful_ he is. His heart races and he feels like he might throw up with the giddy rush swooping through him.

Sam was right. It’s like a goddamn freefall.

Dr Barnes and Jo are talking but it’s like they’re underwater. Dean’s body is working on autopilot, following protocol and Dr Barnes’ instructions without any of it actually reaching him. He puts the ventilator mask over his mate’s mouth and then stands over him, carefully checking his head for injuries. His hair is damp with sweat and there’s drying blood matting it, but it’s soft against Dean’s fingers and his mate is just staring up at him like he’s incapable of so much as blinking.

His mouth moves, trying to form words behind the mask, and his good arm lifts and reaches unsteadily for Dean, clutching weakly at his scrubs. His fingers are cold through Dean’s sleeve, flecked with smears of dried blood. The shape of his hand, his folded fingers and thin wrist… it’s delicate, like a pale bird. Dean stares. Even as a part of him is wondering incredulously at his sudden, awkwardly poetic, fascination with _hands,_ he’s thinking that there’s something lovely in that fragility.

Across his mate’s skin, just below his knuckles, there’s a reminder scrawled in smudged blue ink. It’s upside down but Dean can make it out anyway.

_‘milk’_

Before Dean can analyze why his mate’s shopping habits are setting off butterflies in his stomach, Jo’s tapping his shoulder, insistent. Dean glances up in annoyance and she’s saying something, IV in one hand, gesturing franticly, her beta scent sharpening in annoyance. Her voice is sharp and grating and she’s too close all of a sudden. Before he knows quite what he’s doing Dean’s growling lowly, leaning over his mate and baring his teeth at her. Her eyes widen in surprise and she flinches back a little, but still waves the IV instantly.  Which… Dean’s head clears a little because yeah. His mate is injured, he needs that. He forces himself to take his mate’s hand in his own and push it down against his side so Jo can insert the IV, making a comforting shushing noise low in his throat as his mate whines in protest and looks up at him with wet eyes.

The flare of his fear does something to him and Dean finds himself bending over, nuzzling gently at the uninjured side of his mate’s face. He hums in his throat and turns into the gesture, scenting at Dean’s skin, his breath warm and sweet. The fear-scent fades, leaving clean, fresh, _mate_ sweet in Dean’s nose. It’s almost enough to block out the _chemical- blood-piss-death_ stink of the ER itself. Dean presses a little closer, takes greedy little breaths directly off his skin. Around them Jo and Dr Barnes buzz and whisper, but Dean ignores them, thoughts fuzzy and scent-drunk on his mate.

 

 

He’s not sure how much time has passed by the time his mate’s eyes flutter closed and he sinks into a sedated sleep. Dean just stares at him for a long while, eyes memorizing the lines of his face, the shape of him, and then Jo is at his side, tapping him on the shoulder again, much more hesitantly.

He takes a deep breath as the world swells back to full volume and his foggy thoughts clear.

It’s like waking up from a dream.

He’s sitting on a stool that he has no recollection of fetching. He’s curled over a gurney in a curtained off corner the A & E ward. There is a sleeping man in front of him, and he is Dean’s mate.

“Dean?” Jo asks.

Dean shakes his head and tries to get a grip of himself. “Yeah.” His voice comes out croaky and he clears his throat, remembering growling at Jo and Dr Barnes with delayed embarrassment. He glances down at the unconscious man on the gurney in disbelief, the full extent of what’s happened finally hitting him. “Shit.”

Jo snorts. “Only you would find your mate in the ER Winchester.”

“Shuddup Jo,” Dean mutters. “This isn’t funny.”

She grins. “Um, yeah it kinda is. Best gossip in _months._ ”

Dean ignores her, instead looking down at his mate, checking him over now that he’s got his wits back.

“He’s fine,” Jo tells him. “Broken arm, blood loss, bunch of stitches and some bruising.”

“I know,” Dean huffs. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Jo raises an eyebrow. “Yeah - in lala land,” she says. “Doc Barnes had to bring Garth in to help me stitch your boy here up since all you were capable of was patting his hair and growling.” She steps closer, a clipboard in one hand. “Anyway, I’ve got his insurance details here - thought you might like to know tall, dark and bleeding’s name.”

Dean snatches the chart from her, eyes darting over form anxious. “Castiel?” he says dubiously. “His name’s _Castiel?..._ What the hell kinda name is that?”

Jo shrugs. “What? He look more like a Steve or a Jimmy to you?”

Dean scrunches up face. “No.” Because he really doesn’t. He’s beautiful and maybe that’s why his parents gave him a weirdass name, they knew he was too good for the likes of Steve or Bob or whatever. Jo just smirks at him, like she thinks he’s the funniest thing ever. He ignores her and looks back down at the chart, reading aloud.

“He’s twenty-four, O+, lives downtown...” Dean stops, something hot and violent throbbing through him as he reads and re-reads Castiel’s infomation. He has to actually close his eyes and count to ten like a kid because he’s suddenly full-on alpha, punch-a-hole-in-the-wall, _livid._

“Dean?” Jo asks, the teasing note gone from her voice.

Dean opens his eyes and reads over the insurance form once more, slowly and carefully, then straightens it and passes it back to her. Jo’s looking up at him in a mix of concern and wariness, no doubt able to smell how... fucking insanely _furious_ he is. “What is it?”

Dean swallows. “He’s married,” he says, more or less growling despite his attempts to control himself.

Jo winces. “Fuck. Really?”

Dean nods.

She pats him on the shoulder, glancing at Dean’s unconscious _not-_ mate in confusion. “But... I mean, he’s obviously not mated?” she asks quietly, sniffing the air to check if Castiel’s scent has changed.

Dean shrugs and tries to keep his cool, but his voice comes out tight. “Doesn’t matter.”

People get married without mating. He’s probably married to a beta. Or maybe another omega. Rare but not unheard of.

Jo snatches the file back and starts reading for herself. “Well _shit,_ ” she says, voice low and pitying.

Dean lets out an ugly snort of agreement. _Well shit_ sums it up pretty well. Just his luck to find his mate and discoverer he’s _married._ Dean lets himself seethe at the unfairness of it for a minute and then gets his shit together.

He’s not an asshole. This _Castiel_ doesn’t know him from Jack, doesn’t owe him shit. Dean’s not gonna fuck up some guy’s life, try and break up his marriage just because their biology clicks. They’re strangers and it’ll stay that way. He lets himself look down at his mate – no, _patient_ – once more, and then stands and walks straight out of the ward. Jo’s hot on his heels but Dean ignores her. Castiel’s file said the family had been notified. His... _husband_ is probably already on his way. Last thing he’ll want to see is some knothead sniffing around his unconscious husband.

Dean’s shift ends 40 minutes later and he heads home and stretches out on the couch with a six pack. He’s angry. Stupidly irrationally angry, an itch under his skin that has him gritting his teeth and glaring at his TV. It reminds him of his first ruts when he was a hormonal, fucked-up teenager, except worse. The fact that he knows it’s just some stupid hormonal reaction to finding his mate, that it’s just a temporary chemical fuck-up in his brain, doesn’t help calm him down any.

He drinks the beer and thinks about getting something to eat, but his stomach is knotted up, hunger long forgotten. Instead he heads down to the basement and spends an hour kicking the shit out of the punching bag he keeps in the overpriced storage lock-up.

He’s still seething when he heads back up to his apartment to shower, but his body’s finally remembered that it’s tired and that he should be passed the fuck out getting whatever sleep he can before his next shift.

Dean’s asleep more or less as soon as he hits the pillow. But his dreams are blurred and feature soft dark hair and bright blue eyes and he wakes up achingly hard with an awful hollow deep in his chest.


	2. Chapter 2

When Castiel wakes up Balthazar is snoring in a chair at his side. His clothes are rumpled and the angle of his head looks painful. Castiel watches him quietly for a few minutes, his thoughts spooling and clumping together as he pieces together the night before.

He’d been out with Meg - drinks to cheer her up after the breakup with that asshole Fergus. They’d spent a few hours at her favorite bar drinking the most absurd things on the menu and critiquing every man between the ages of 18 and 80 that had walked into the place, but since none met Meg’s stringent standards for a rebound fuck, they’d spilt a cab home together alone. Cas remembers waving to her as she jogged unsteadily to her building, almost tripping over herself in the skin-tight jeans-and-boots combo she always reverted to whenever her lovelife took a nosedive, and then staring out the window at the lights of the city and worrying about his group project for Professor Turner’s class as the cab continued towards home.

He remembers a light through the opposite passenger window, being drunkenly annoyed at how _bright_ it was, hitting him right in his eyes and making him squint, and then a deafening crash and being thrown around, his seatbelt digging in painfully to his ribs and something twisting his arm excruciatingly. After that there’s only pain, the memory of hands on him, people staring down at him and asking him things, the noise of sirens, the smell of bleach and blood and fear, his own and strangers. The ambulance probably, or the emergency room.

There’s something else though, some memory that that has him pressing a hand to his forehead, stroking at his own hair like he’s never felt it before. He inhales and thinks he catches some lingering… scent? His heart skips in a strange warm panic and he feels weirdly anxious. He can’t explain the feeling, doesn’t know what it means, so he ignores it and thinks over what he _does_ understand.

Sober and only a little woozy from whatever’s in his drip, it’s easy to put together the rest of his evening. Someone had T-boned the cab and he’d ended up in hospital. Cas wiggles his toes and sighs in relief when they shift under the blankets. There’s nothing on his face – no oxygen mask or anything, and apart from the cast on his left arm, Cas can’t see anything too serious. His chest aches, his arm throbs, he has a headache and that strange anxious feeling remains - like something is missing or _wrong -_ but apart from that it seems like he got off fairly lightly.

“Cassie!” Balthazar says, smiling brightly and rubbing sleep from his tried eyes. “Oh thank god!”

Cas leans a little towards him and tilts his face, offering his cheek to be kissed. The dry press of his husband’s lips is more of an ordeal than usual and he has to restrain the urge to shrug the attention off. Luckily Balthazar doesn’t seem to notice. “I was so worried,” he continues. “I was at the head office when they called and it took _hours_ to get back from LA.”

“I’m fine,” Cas croaks, then coughs a little, trying to clear his throat. “The arm feels like the worst of it?”

Balthazar purses his lips. “You’re not _fine,_ ” he says. “Some drunk plowed into your cab, _killed_ the poor driver on impact and you nearly bled out!” He shakes his head. “If the ambulance had come a few minutes later, you wouldn’t have made it.” His voice is shaking and Cas can scent his fear.

He smiles and makes himself pat Balthazar’s hand. “But it did. And I’m okay.”

Balthazar lets out a long breath and slumps down into his chair. “You’re right of course, no use fretting over might have beens and all that,” he agrees. “So how are you feeling? Honestly?”

Cas shrugs a little. “Sore. Thirsty. Like I could sleep for a week.”

“I’ll fetch someone to look at you, get you some meds,” Balthazar says, getting to his feet.

The moment he is gone from the room, something eases in Cas’s chest and he frowns.

Balthazar comes back with a blonde nurse who looks at Cas funny but is perfectly polite as she checks his readings, asks him how he’s feeling and fills him in on his injuries and treatment. He’s not in any kind of danger, but they want him to stay for observation for another night at least.

Castiel eats some disgusting hospital food and spends the rest of the day sleeping. Balthazar stays for a few hours before heading home, promising to return the next morning. Castiel is actually glad when he leaves. He’s tired and sore and half-sedated. Balthazar’s presence is oddly grating. He wants to be left alone. Ideally in his own bed at home, but the hospital room is quiet enough, even if it does smell of disinfectant and faintly, mysteriously, of cabbage.

He sleeps through dinner and wakes up suddenly in the middle of the night, disorientated. He sits up and stares around the tiny room, half-asleep brain looking around for someone that isn’t there. Without making any conscious decision to do so, he huffs a few breaths, scenting the air deeply on the back of his tongue. Mostly it’s the same unpleasant mélange of hospital smells, but again he gets that familiar sweet note he’d half imagined when he first awoke. Something… deep and warm Familiar.

He wracks his brain, trying to think where he knows it from, but it’s useless. He eases back into the hard pillows. It was probably just a nurse with nice perfume or cologne or something. One of those expensive synthetic pheromone scents. God knows working in a hospital you’d probably invest in some to cover up the stink of sickness and bleach.

Satisfied with his explanation, Cas lets his eyes drift shut.

It’s still dark when he wakes up again only an hour or two later. That nagging ache is back except this time Castiel knows exactly what it is because he wakes up reaching for someone, someone with green eyes who smells of fresh hewn wood and spice. There’s a strange whine in the back of his throat and not only is he hard, he’s slick and wet and _open._ For a drowsy moment he just lies there, rolling his hips against the mattress lazily, and then realization breaks over him like cold water.

He remembers.

Green eyes, soft freckles, fingers combing through his hair and the warm smell of home. Mate. _Alpha_.

He rips the heart monitor off his finger and tears out his IV, ignoring the sting of the needle, then lurches unsteadily to the tiny bathroom attached to his room. He shuts the door and presses his back against it like it’s a barricade that will protect him from the truth. From his _mate._

 

* * *

Dean’s over-reacting. He’s a doctor. He knows exactly what’s going on, why his head feels so fucked up and he feels like he’s _dying_ , but reading about the symptoms or seeing them in patients is very different to going through them himself.

Everyone knows. Dr Barnes, Jo and Garth had been there for the whole humiliating dispaly after all. No one says anything, but everyone gives him a little extra space and forgives him his short temper. Of course all that manages to do is piss him off even more. The pitying looks, the conversations hushed when he walks by.

He hates it, but he manages to keep it inside. Every time he gets the urge to punch a wall or someone’s face, he takes a deep breath and calls on all that very un-alpha zen calm he’d been forced to develop out of sheer necessity growing up in an all alpha household. The Winchester home had been a volatile one, but all that aggression had left both Dean and Sam with the sort of patience alphas raised with betas or omegas to boss around just didn’t seem to have. Growing up third in the pecking order had seemed like a fate worse than death when he’d been a teenager, but as he got older Dean realized how lucky he was. A lot of the alphas he’d grown up with had been spoiled assholes by the time they got to college. Loudmouth, arrogant, dicks used to getting their way.

So he doesn’t snap or yell, no matter how angry he is. No way is he gonna let his hormones turn him into a raging douchebag. And it’s only for a few days. Just until the mating bond breaks. The symptoms will last about three days, a week tops. And it’s not even a _strong_ bond. Not like a break up with a long term partner, someone loved and kissed and fucked if not fully mated.

He barely even touched Castiel. Didn’t speak to him even, just scented him, and scent-matings are rare and tenuous. The weakest of bonds, a connection tethered by scent and proximity instead of intent or mating. A half-mating. Two peoples’ bodies tagging each other as potential mates, nothing more. Nothing permanent.

And a thwarted mating bond itself is hardly unusual. Plenty of people go through them. They’re usually something that happens to horny teenagers with no self-control or after drunken one night stands though. Dean’s circumstance is odd, but the fact remains that they’re _temporary_. They _fade_.

It’s still fucking _awful_ though.

He knows Castiel is upstairs, knows the ward and room number, can feel every yard like there’s a rubber band stretched between them. He caves that first shift back, sneaks up to the fourth floor and opens the door, stands just beyond the threshold for maybe thirty seconds. Long enough to reassure his stupid inner alpha that Castiel is sleeping and that he’s perfectly safe and recovering. He wants so badly to cross the room and put his hands on him, touch that soft hair, see those blue eyes of his open and clear and hear his voice.

He doesn’t of course, instead he reminds himself that Castiel has a husband and this is an invasion of his privacy.

Jo had said he hadn’t even mentioned Dean, and he could have. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Castiel to ask one of the nurses about him. He hadn’t though. Sure he’d clutched at Dean in the ER, but he’d been totally out of it at the time, scared and hurting. Obviously when he’d woken up with his wits returned to him, he’d decided not to pursue the stupid little… _thing_ that had happened between them. Which is completely understandable.

Dean stares at him for a long moment, the man that could have been his soulmate, the love of his life or whatever, and then shuts the door. He doesn’t go back.

The second night is just as bad as the first.

Dean is restless and uncomfortable and every now and then he finds himself rubbing at the center of his chest, at the ache that’s blossomed there. He visits the gym straight after his shift ends and works himself more or less to exhaustion, but he still can’t sleep when he crawls into bed later on. Everything seems to smell wrong and the mattress is too hard. He drags out the extra comforter that usually only gets use in the middle of winter and the spare pillows from when Sam comes and crashes on the couch. It’s marginally better. Enough that he can sleep at least.

When he wakes up the next morning his head aches and the hollow in his chest feels bigger though.

He’s off shift and normally he’d lounge around all day, play some video games, watch a few movies, have a few beers and maybe order a pizza, but he can’t stay in the apartment. Something about it feels wrong and makes him jittery and irritable. So he goes out for a drive. His Camaro isn’t as fun to drive as his dad’s pristine Impala, but the modern comforts of a decent stereo, frosty AC and comfy bucket seats are enough to make up for that. More or less.

With the music turned up and the highway in stretching out in front of him, he can almost relax, take his mind off that nagging pull in the center of his chest. He drives aimlessly for a few hours then stops at a diner and orders the sort of meal that would have Bradbury from Cardiology shaking her head and talking about penciling him in for a bypass.

The burger is juicy, the fries crisp and salty, but it doesn’t taste quite as good as it should.

Smell is an important part of taste and even though he knows that his olfactory senses are screwed up by the scent-mating at the moment, it’s bizarre to sit in front of a delicious greasy heart attack on a plate and be about as tempted as if it was a wilted garden salad. He eats every last bite though. His appetite is gone but he knows he needs to eat. Just like he needs to sleep.

With that in mind he stops at a mall on his meandering drive back into the Palo Alto. The smell of fast food and hundreds of people all under one huge roof is a good distraction. He wastes almost an hour meandering around a few department stores before he ends up in Bed Bath and Beyond of all places, wandering around the bedding section remembering his uncomfortable night’s rest.

The pillows are all encased in plastic, reassuringly sterile and scent free. Usually he prefers firm memory foam, but he finds himself lingering over the plush fluffy ones instead, picking them up and fluffing them between his hands, testing their softness. There’s some kind of sale on, so he impulsively buys a new comforter too, thick winter weight. Since it seems like a waste to get all that new stuff and use old sheets he grabs a new set, and then gets distracted by an incredibly soft blanket.

It’s some sort of fake ‘mink’ or something, the sort of thing his college girlfriend Lisa might have had draped over the back of her couch or on top of her comforter. It’s a deep blue and Dean thinks idly that it would sort of match the sheet set he has tucked under one arm, so he picks it up as well. He draws the line at throw pillows though and makes his way to the check out before he ends up with votive candles or something.

Apart from one incident of road rage when some asshole in an SUV cuts him off, he feels okay for the rest of the afternoon. More like himself. The ache in his chest seems to have faded a bit even. When he gets home he unpacks his spontaneous new purchases with faint excitement, new things are always exciting, even if it’s just bedding, and washes the sheets and the blanket. There’s a game on, so he drinks a few beers while they go through the cycle and then the dryer. When he pulls them out they’re soft and static-y and smell faintly of Dean’s washing detergent instead of plastic.

Making up his bed with his new purchases is way more interesting than it has any right to be. Dean fiddles around with the soft sheets and the thick comforter and the blanket for ages, but they don’t seem to sit right. Abruptly he realizes that his bedroom is all wrong. The bed shouldn’t be in the _middle_ of the room, it should be in the _corner._ It seems so obvious that he can’t understand how he’s been sleeping with it all wrong for so long. He has to shift a bookshelf and a bedside table and liberates a family of enormous dust bunnies in the process, but once he has his bed in the corner, tucked against the interior wall facing the window, it instantly feels better. Satisfied, he orders himself Chinese and settles down to spend his night off relaxing. He eats too many egg rolls and  catches up on a few shows on Netflix and by the time he’s brushing his teeth for bed, he’s feeling good enough that he thinks maybe the mating-bond has already faded.

After his shower he pulls on clean pajama pants to make the most of his new clean bedding. He burrows under the layers and arranges the new pillows, trying to get them just right. It’s still a bit off though and he can’t get completely comfortable. It’s much better than the night before though, which is reassuring. He falls asleep quietly optimistic that the bond will have dissipated entirely by morning.

But then he wakes up in the middle of the night and everything’s _wrong._ His chest is aching and everything smells weird and his new blankets seem weirdly _lumpy_ all of a sudden. Half asleep and irritable, he gets up and grabs the old comforter and pillows from where he’d shoved them in the laundry the night before and drags them back to bed. He’s sort of hot with all the pillows and blankets, so he strips off. The ache in his chest is a dull annoyance, but with the extra bedding he feels a bit better. Almost comfortable. He sleeps.

His alarm doesn’t wake him up, nor does any vague mating related discomfort - in the morning it’s his aching dick that drags him back to consciousness. It’s almost like a rut. He’s hard, throbbing and _needing_ in a way that’s not normal. The smell of it is thick and musky and he groans, half-grossed out by his own horny stink. He thinks about jerking off in bed, but with all his new nice smelling stuff can’t quite bring himself to.

Instead he forces himself up and wanders into the kitchen, yawning and nude, stubbornly ignoring his dick even though it’s sticking out like a damn divining rod in front of him. After tuning on the coffee machine he admits defeat and stumbles into the shower. Still half-asleep, he slumps against the tiles under the warm water and jerks off lazily, one hand massaging the base of his dick. It’s not until he’s wide awake and shuddering through an intense orgasm that he realizes that he’s got his hands wrapped around his _knot._

_“Fuck.”_

He hasn’t popped a knot jerking off since puberty. Not outside his rut at least. He’s annoyed since he knows this is another symptom of the goddamn scent-mating, his dick’s way of saying _‘hey where’s our mate?’,_ but he can’t resist dragging it out, massaging the sensitive bulge of flesh and coaxing shuddering demi-orgasms and a ridiculous amount of come out of his stupid hormone-addled dick.

Afterwards he feels drained and resentful more than anything. The smell of coffee that permeates the air when he drags himself out from under the water is a small consolation. He sighs and heads back to his bedroom for some pants. “One more day,” he mutters to himself, rubbing at the ache below his collarbone. One more day and the scent-mating should fade and he can forget all about Castiel his not-mate.

For a moment he’s disorientated, his spontaneous redecorating the night before taking him by surprise as he steps back into his room. Then he catches sight of his bed in the corner and his stomach drops.

The mattress is piled with blankets and pillows. He can see where he slept, a little Dean shaped hollow in the middle of the nest. Because it’s obvious now, what it is. It’s a nest _._ A mating-bower. He went and made a fucking _nest_ for Castiel.

He can’t remember the last time he felt so stupid.

The reason he felt better yesterday wasn’t because the scent-bond was fading, it was because he spent all evening indulging his stupid alpha hindbrain and went and made his goddamn _imaginary_ _mate_ a nice soft warm bower for them to share and do whatever mates do. Fuck. Mate. Knot. Make _babies_. Jesus. He wants to punch himself.

Snarling, he rips the stupid pillows and comforters and the goddamn _mink_ blanket off the bed and tosses them to the floor. The bare sheets glare up at him smugly. Blue. Everything he bought was _blue._

Like Castiel’s eyes he realizes with mortification.

He feels even more pathetic than he did a minute ago and wordlessly, shapelessly, _furious._ At himself. It’s dark and thick and choking him up inside and he just wants to slam his head into something. Scream. Tear at himself.

He knows it’s just the mating, just chemicals and hormones messing with him, but he can’t talk himself around. It’s too much. Dean ends up sitting naked in the middle of his bedroom, blankets and pillows scattered around him, pulling at his hair just to stop himself from tearing at his skin. He’s making an awful snarling noise that hurts his throat, but he can’t stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: at one stage this fic was called _"Dean makes a Pillow Fort and it's rly rly sad :'( "_


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel’s house smells _wrong._

Balthazar’s grassy scent turns his nose. It’s never drawn him, but he’s never found it _unpleasant_ before. He does his best to ignore it, but he can hardly bear being in the same room as him, let alone anything else. Not that Balthazar expects anything. Their boundaries are well established. Theirs is a marriage in name only, a favor between friends.

Balthazar had needed a spouse to satisfy his bigoted father’s will so he could inherit, and Castiel had needed a husband so his mother would stop trying to marry him off to some ‘nice alpha’ who’d ‘look after him’. His family were traditional in their views on mating dynamics. Sending him off to college unmated was unthinkable.

Bitter and desperate, Balthazar’s offer had provided him a perfect escape. It was either a sham marriage and the freedom to study whatever he wanted, build himself a career and life far away from his family and get at least a taste of the independence he craved, or going home and letting his mother parade him in front of an endless procession of alphas like some turn of the century debutante until one claimed him.

His mother had been delighted. Balthazar was a beta, so not _ideal,_ but he was rich and (according to her at least) had _‘-such class Castiel._ _Europeans have such dignity.’_ Castiel had nodded along and told his mother exactly what she wanted to hear. Which in truth had not been so much of a stretch – Balthazar was a hedonist and a drunkard, would fuck anything with a pulse and basically drink gasoline - but he was a good man and a good friend, someone Castiel trusted. He was loyal and kind, even if he hid it behind a thick veneer of biting sarcasm and acidic wit. There were worse people to be married too. Like basically _every_ unattached alpha Castiel had been introduced to since he presented.

So Castiel and Balthazar had exchanged vows in a big church a week after his nineteenth birthday, then spent a month ‘honeymooning’ across Europe, (Castiel did a lot of sightseeing and Balthazar visited a lot of nightclubs), and they’d been happily ‘married’ ever since, Castiel with something approaching independence, his mother with a rich son-in-law to brag about and Balthazar with access to his inheritance.

It had been stilted to start with, the first few weeks they’d lived together, but they’d adjusted and it had ended up working surprisingly well.

Balthazar drinks too much and works too hard and shows a spectacular lack of foresight in selecting bed partners and Castiel goes to his classes and answers to no one. Being married hadn’t ruined their friendship like Castiel had feared. Balthazar listens to him complain about his professors and classes, and Castiel brings him aspirin when he’s hungover and screens his calls for him when one of his flings gets ugly. Apart from the occasional family gathering where they have to play the part of happy couple, the fact that they’re married doesn’t really come up in their day to day lives.

For the first time in a long time their arrangement weighs on Castiel though. The dishonesty of it has always troubled him, but he’s found his own ways to cope with the lies. He looks down at the gold band on his finger, twists it around and over the knuckle and back again. For some reason, explaining what had happened at the hospital – even though their marriage is only a technicality and what happened was pure chance, an accident - makes him feel sick.

Balthazar thinks little of the vows they had made to each other in that church, but for Castiel it’s different. He doesn’t _want_ to be married to Balthazar, doesn’t want to married to _anyone_ , but he stood in front of his entire family, in front of the priest that had baptized him when he was a baby, and had vowed before god to be Balthazar’s husband. Anna had been smiling widely, her eyes wet, when they made their way back down the aisle as a married couple. His sister had been so happy for him. He had felt sick.

Castiel’s feelings regarding his marriage are complicated.

Balthazar’s infidelity means nothing to him. There is no spark of attraction to ignite jealousy between them - they have never even consummated their marriage, (though Balthazar had informed him on their wedding night that he’d be willing to _‘give it a whirl’_ ), but Castiel tries to keep the lies to a minimum. Yes he married Balthazar under false pretenses, but as long as he hasn’t actually broken the vows he made in that church, he feels better about it, like it is less of a lie.

So he makes himself speak even though he doesn’t want to. “Something happened,” he tells Balthazar as he buzzes around Castiel’s room, opening the curtains, unpacking the overnight bag he’d brought him and setting the little bottles of pills they’d given him on his bedside table.

“Hmm?” Balthazar asks, distracted.

“After the accident,” Castiel says. “In the hospital.”

Balthazar looks up and finally gives Castiel his complete attention. “What?”

Castiel swallows and has to physically stop himself fidgeting. “I… There was someone. A doctor,” he starts, the words all tangling up in his throat. Balthazar frowns and comes to sit beside him on the bed. His grassy scent thickens in concern, grows almost wheaty, and bile rises in Castiel’s throat. He hates that his body is responding differently to his friend. Balthazar’s companionship has always been a comfort. “An alpha,” he forces out.

Balthazar’s eyes widen in alarm. “Did he do something?” he demands, leaning closer.

Castiel shakes his head. “No. Well, I don’t think so?”

Reaching out and taking Castiel’s hand, Balthazar says, “It’s okay, just take a deep breath.”

Castiel wants to pull his hand from his friend’s grip but knows how it will offend him. He turns his head a little and breathes through his mouth so he doesn’t smell his scent quite so strongly. “I can’t really remember, but he was there and… we scent-mated.”

Castiel smells Balthazar’s shock and dismay before he can actually say anything. “Oh Cassie, are you alright? He didn’t try anything did he?”

Castiel shakes his head. The concern apparent in Balthazar’s words ease something inside.

“You should have said something, we could have moved you to another hospital, had you discharged quicker…”

“I wasn’t sure how to tell you,” Castiel admits. “And I didn’t realize what had happened, not right away. I don’t really remember what happened after the accident and I didn’t remember anything at all when I first woke up, it was only when…”

“The symptoms kicked in?” Balthazar asks with a sympathetic wince. “Yes, they’re no picnic. But don’t worry, a bond like that fizzles out after a few days. I mean, you didn’t even sleep with him. You’ll be back to yourself by the end of the week.”

Castiel nods. “I just… I just thought you should know,” he murmurs, embarrassed. Balthazar is right, it’s not a big deal, not something he needed to stress over. Most people have formed half-bonds or marked potential mates more than once well before they reach Castiel’s age. Balthazar’s probably temporarily bonded with dozens of people given how exuberantly he dates.

“Thank you,” Balthazar says, patting his knee and managing to seem only _slightly_ condescending. “I’m glad you told me. It must have been awful, waking up banged-up in a hospital bed with a persistent hard-on for some strange alpha on top of everything else.” He gives Castiel another pat. “Was he old? Some old doctor in baggy scrubs?” His eyes light up gleefully. “Or maybe it was a nurse? A matronly alpha who changed your bedpan? Gave you a sponge bath and was struck by your masculine beauty?”

The teasing breaks Castiel’s mood and he scowls at his friend, trying to hold back the smile from his lips. “You’re such an ass.”

Balthazar grins widely. “Touché Cassie, but I’m _your_ ass,” he says, “So if you need anything?”

Castiel shakes his head and Balthazar leaves him to his rest.

Castiel’s tired and he’s already in bed, so he lays back and settles in for a nap, but the bed seems much harder than he remembers. Sleep had been uncomfortable at the hospital, but he’d thought his discomfort was the awful hospital mattress, but apparently it’s something else. He tosses and turns for hours and eventually sneaks into Balthazar’s bathroom and takes a few of his sleeping pills.

He sleeps in till almost midday, but he doesn’t feel rested when he wakes up.

Most of it is probably his bruised ribs and the ache of his arm, but he knows there’s more to it. The sticky mess in his shorts when he gets up to shower is proof enough of that, no matter how little wants to think about it. After he’s cleaned himself up, he takes an extra suppressant pill, just in case. The last thing he wants is to go into a triggered heat for a stranger.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Sam wrinkles his nose and looks at him weirdly the moment Dean slides into the booth opposite him. “Holy shit,” he says, scenting the air between them. “You met someone? When? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Ignoring his brother’s outburst for the moment, Dean waves their waitress over and orders a burger and fries out of habit more than anything else. It’s been a week, in fact it’s been closer to _two weeks_ and the stupid scent-bond hasn’t faded yet. “It’s not like that,” Dean says. “I’m not dating anyone. It was an accident.”

Sam frowns. “You scent-mated with a one night stand?” he asks, more or less dripping with disapproval. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for playing at mates with your drunken hookups Dean?”

Dean glares. “It wasn’t a _hookup_ ,” he replies. “It was a patient.”

His brother’s face twists into one of even greater horror. “You mated a _patient_ Dean!?” he demands in a low hiss, like he’s worried they might be overheard and someone will inform the media. “Isn’t that, _grossly unethical!?_ ”

“Stop talking,” Dean snaps. “It was a straight-up, accidental, no-funny-business, scent-mating okay?” He pauses to smile and thank the waitress as his food arrives. “An omega was brought it after a car accident. I was working on him with Dr Barnes and Jo. He was freaking out and I was just talking to him, trying to calm him down and it just sorta happened. We didn’t even have a proper conversation, let alone get up to anything _grossly unethical_.”

Sam instantly adopts an expression of understanding and puppy dog eyes. “Wow. That’s awkward.”

“Understatement,” Dean mutters. “And it’s goddamn annoying as hell. Feel like I wanna scratch my own skin off.”

“It’ll fade,” Sam reassures him. “We’ve all been there.”

“Yeah I know,” Dean agrees chewing at a bland fry despondently. “I steered clear of him when I realized what had happened, so there’s no hold there.” He carefully doesn’t mention that one late night visit to lurk in Castiel’s room for a minute while he slept. In hindsight it sounds creepy as fuck and he hadn’t touched him or scented him, so it couldn’t have affected the bond and is therefore conveniently irrelevant to the conversation with his little brother.

Sam tilts his head and swallows a mouthful of whatever green leafy rubbish it is that’s piled up on his plate. There are _seeds._ “You didn’t wanna see if you guys clicked properly?” he asks curiously. “I mean, a spontaneous scent-mating like that is pretty rare, could be something there.” He pauses and his brow furrows thoughtfully. “Or was he um, hideously deformed or something?” Dean just glares at him, not bothering to answer. “Or maybe really old? Is that is? Did you mate with a senior citizen Dean?”

Dean glares. “No,” he says. “He’s a couple of years younger than me and seemed pretty good looking for a guy who’d just been in a car accident. What he _is_ however _,_ is _married_.”

“Oh wow,” Sam says. “Uh, yeah. Wise decision steering clear of that then.”

“Yep,” Dean replies shortly and they eat silently for a minute. Dean chews mechanically and sips at his water to wash his burger down. “Everything tastes like cardboard,” he bitches.

Sam lets out a pitying hum. “Yeah, breaking a mating sucks,” he agrees. “Remember Ruby?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Of _course_ I remember Ruby. She keyed my car.”

“It took a _week_ for that to fade,” Sam tells him. “It felt like a month. Everything stunk, I could barely eat, hardly sleep, I had this killer headache and I sweated so much I repulsed even myself…”

“Don’t forget that persistent boner situation you had going on,” Dean adds, just to be an asshole. “Stunk out the apartment for a month.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “ _Really_ Dean? You’re gonna go there? Given your current situation? Cause I bet the last few days have resulted in a lot of chaffing--”

Dean holds up a hand to silence him and cuts him off. “Yeah yeah enough, I get it. Glass houses and all that, no boner jokes.”

Sam gives him a prissy look, like he’s thinking about going for it anyway, but then decides to be the bigger man and lets it slide, returning his attention to his salad. Dean gives him a once over as he bites into his burger again. He’s looking good. He and Jess go to some yoga class twice a week and they’re both big on organic produce so Sam looks way better than most stressed out grad school students. Much better than he did when he was dating Ruby. And the man sitting across from him is completely unrecognizable from the wreck that he’d been when he’d been pining for her as their bond faded.

Dean remembers exactly how out of it Sam had been after Ruby high-tailed it. It makes him feel a bit better about his own situation, but it also worries him a little because, “You and Ruby. That was a different deal. You guys had actually been _dating._ This is just some guy. It’s weird man, feeling this way over, you know, a stranger. It’s not like this is a real break up.”

“It _is_ strange,” Sam agrees, leaning closer in that way he does when he’s excited and curious about something. “You know how rare a straight-up scent mating is? It’s a pity he’s married because you two must be _insanely_ compatible. Rom-com levels of made for each other.”

Dean gives him a withering look. “Well he is, so that’s that.”

Sam’s instantly contrite. “Yeah you’re right. And awful as you feel right now, I’m sure once it breaks you’ll be glad you didn’t try and follow up on it. Mating claims and marriage law are a _mess_. There was this case we went over in class last semester and--”

Dean lets his eyes glaze over as his brother launches into a long rambling speech about court cases and litigation and all that other fascinating crap he spends all day pouring over at Law school. Sometimes the way he goes on makes Dean nostalgic for med school, which is saying something. Sure he had no social or sex life to speak of and he was lucky to get 4 hours uninterrupted sleep in a row, but at least it wasn’t all boring court cases and musty old tomes. Law school somehow manages to sound even worse.

The door to the diner opens and closes stirring up a slight breeze and bringing with it a waft of something sweet and flowery. The scent distracts Sam and he trails off mid-sentence even as Dean finds himself jerking up straight in his seat and craning his neck, searching for the source of the sweetness in the air, but as soon as he traces it to its source – a pretty omega just edging up to heat from the ripe smell of her – it curdles on the back of his tongue, turns sour and _wrong._ He swallows back a mouthful of salvia and then tries to wash the scent out of his system with a long drink from his glass.

Across the table Sam’s staring at the same young woman, his nose wrinkled in distaste. He sneezes shortly and grimaces before spearing a heaping forkful of his salad, like he’s hoping spinach leaves and chia seeds will clear the omega’s heatscent from his senses. Dean knows exactly how he feels, and that understanding makes him uneasy because Sam is _mated_ , fully and properly.

He bonded with Jess back when he was still pre-law. The way the scent of a heat-stricken omega affects them shouldn’t be so similar. Dean’s senses shouldn’t be as affected by a stupid chance scent-mating as his brother is by a deep, _full,_ mating bond with someone he loves, but it looks like he is. Dean sighs and picks at his cold fries.

Two weeks. It _has_ to fade soon. Surely.

Then again it would be just his luck to get to go through a full-on mating break up - pining sickness and all the rest - without even getting the good stuff first. He sure as hell never got to knot and claim Castiel. Never even got to speak to him properly, so much as tell him his name.

He shoves another cardboard french fry into his mouth and tells himself that it tastes better than his dinner had the night before, that the scent-mating’s hold over him is weakening.

*

A month later the half-formed bond with Castiel _still_ hasn’t broken.

It’s softened maybe, or perhaps it’s just that Dean’s gotten used to food being bland and everything smelling horrible, but when his rut hits it seems to be back with a vengeance, as strong as that first awful night.

Dean calls in his designated leave and spends three days locked up in his bedroom masturbating furiously, utterly miserable. It’s the worst rut he’s had in years, comparable only to his very first, that horrible feverish week when he was 14 and thought he was gonna _die_ if he didn’t get his freshly popped knot wedged in someone wet and willing. He tries not to think of his not-mate, tries not to even think his name, but his dick is stubborn and doesn’t know what’s good for it.

Porn just makes him angry and thinking of old flames is even worse. He ends up desperately humping a pillow and moaning the omega’s name, thinking about those blue eyes and that plush mouth, imagining how he’d look underneath Dean whole and healthy and begging for his knot.

It helps, calms him a little, but afterwards his pillow is disgusting and he feels sick and dirty, like an absolute creep, to be thinking about Castiel – a _patient –_ a _stranger -_ some poor guy who’s happily married and didn’t ask for any of this, as he palms his knot like a horny stalker. Except his rut twists that guilt up and turns it into something even uglier. He wonders what Castiel’s husband looks like, if he’s an alpha or a beta. If he knots Castiel. If he’s knotting Castiel right now, fucking him through a heat that should be _Dean’s_ because _Dean_ is his mate.

He could find out. It’d be easy. Just look up Castiel’s details, find his address and then go and take what’s his. If the husband’s there, well, Dean would love nothing more than to tear his fucking throat out with his bare teeth. Then he could pin Castiel down underneath him, rip his clothes off and fuck him until he knew he who he really belonged to. _Dean._

He groans into his pillow, wet with spit, and fucks his right hand roughly, the left curled tight around the swollen ache of his knot. He’s sweating, hot and feverish, and he knows if he looked into a mirror his eyes would be alpha red. Normally losing control would scare him, but for once he finds himself reveling in it, in the aggression he normally keeps locked up tight inside. When he comes his jaw snaps shut and locks up, so hard it aches, as he grinds teethmarks into wet cotton instead of his mate’s skin.

He drifts for a few minutes, idly massaging his knot, milking shivery aftershock spurts of come out into the filthy sheets beneath him. When his blood cools his thoughts shift back into lucid clarity, Dean realizes that he just masturbated to the idea of murder and rape. The sheets tangle around his feet as he stumbles from the bed. He’s tacky with stale sweat and his stomach and crotch is a mess of thick drying semen.

The rich musky stink of it has him gagging.

He barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s spitting up bile. Stuck in his rut for the last few days he’s barely eaten, so there isn’t much to come up. Some orange juice. Coffee. Toast. At some point he starts shaking, a fresh cold sweat pricking all over his skin.

He’s seen alphas in rut rages. It’s common in junkies, the drugs fuck up their hormones, the delicate balancing act of chemicals in their brains. Cops bring them in red-eyed, snarling and foaming at the mouth. Completely unintelligible, regressed to pure violent animal instinct. They have to be more or less chained up or else they try and tear anyone who gets within 20 feet of them into pieces. Just sedating them, giving them a hormone blocker to get them back into their right minds is taking your life into your hands. They have to get the betas to deal with them. Alphas like Dean just make them even more aggressive, and the scent of an omega, mated or not, just compounds the problem, has them trying to fuck everything that moves along with the berseker rage thing.

It’s ugly. Dean’s never had that sort of break in control before, but apparently he’s closer to those spitting knotheads than he thought. If Castiel had been nearby, in the room, there’s no doubt in Dean’s mind that he would have claimed him, willing or not. And if the husband – who could be the love of Castiel’s life and the nicest damn guy in the whole fucking world for all Dean knows – had tried to stop him, Dean would have done his damndest to kill him, and _enjoyed it_.

He can’t believe it. That the person who’d been thinking those things five minutes earlier was actually him. It feels like he’s been tainted, like there’s some evil spirit lurking under his skin that he never knew about, just waiting for the chance to take control, to turn him into a monster.

The shock and self-disgust seems to dull his rut for a while and he’s able to shower and pull on some sweats without his libido making an unwelcome return. He tries watching tv but he can’t relax, just feels anxious and sick.

He ends up calling his dad of all people.

It’s been months since they spoke. Dean calls him mom every few weeks for a catch up, but there isn’t that same pull with his dad. They get along well enough - Dean had worshipped the man growing up - but Dean works long hours and California is a long way from Kansas. And his mom always keeps him up to date anyway.

_“Dean?”_ John sounds surprised to be hearing from him.

Dean flounders for a moment and then clears his throat. “Ah, hey dad.”

Straight away John seems to be able to tell something is wrong. After a short loaded pause he barks: _“What’s wrong?”_

Dean sighs and rubs at his eyes, tries to get his thoughts straight. “Have you ever, ah, scared yourself? Flipped out and gone all alpha?”

The line is quiet for a moment. _“Of course I have, happens to everyone sooner or later. Is something wrong? …Did you hurt someone?”_

“No,” Dean tells him. “I’m by myself. I just, I think if I would’ve, hurt someone that is, if they’d been around.”

_“… Is this about that mess with that patient of yours son?”_ John asks. _“Cause your mother’s getting worried and I can see where she’s coming from. Should have faded out after a week tops.”_

Dean’s cheeks flare in embarrassment, “She told you about that?”

_“Mates don’t keep things from each other Dean, especially things about their kids.”_

Dean groans, suddenly regretting calling his dad at all.

_“Now listen here,”_ John says. _“It’s your rut isn’t it?”_ He’s using his gruff ‘dad’ voice, the one he uses when he’s uncomfortable but trying not to show it. The one he uses when he has to talk about sex or anything as awkward _. “I bet you’re locked up in your apartment jerking off like a horny 14 year old.”_

Dean wishes the ground would open up and swallow him. “ _Daaad-”_

_“Don’t ‘daaad!’ me Dean. Now look, your rut when you’re mated is a whole different ball game. It’s that bond screwing with your head. Just stay away from everyone, and for godsakes, when your rut clears go see one of your damn doctor buddies already and get them to find out why the thing hasn’t broken yet. It’s not normal.”_

“Yes sir,” Dean says, only half sarcastic.

_“Then call your mother and let her know you’re alright,”_ John adds.

He gets another twenty minutes of blessedly boner free thinking time, most of which he uses alternately reassuring himself and then self-flagellating bitterly, and then the need is back. Dean doesn’t try and fight it this time, doesn’t try and hold off. He lets himself imagine Castiel tight and slick and _happy_ around his cock and jerks himself to an unsatisfying orgasm.

He’d rather feel creepy for fantasizing about a regular fuck than end up out of his mind jerking off to the idea of ripping someone’s throat out and fucking Castiel in the arterial spray.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is NSFW artwork in the middle of this chapter if you are reading this at work or on a bus or something.

The cast comes off after six weeks. Six long annoying weeks of awkward showers and not being able to fit his arm in the sleeves of his jackets and coats and typing out his notes and assignments one-handed. He’s actually been relying on _Meg’s_ for one of his classes, which an exercise in intense frustration. They’re in hand-written shorthand. With strange pornographic footnotes about their lectures.

She’s guilty over his accident, blaming herself for it despite Castiel’s reassurances and trying to make it up to him with notes and coffee fetched from his favorite shop just off campus, so it’s Meg who ends up driving him in to have the cast removed.

He hasn’t told her about the scent-mating, and since she’s a beta she hasn’t noticed any change to his scent, so she doesn’t know the reason other than transportation that Castiel’s so glad to have her company and that Balthazar was so intensely relieved she could drive him when he couldn’t.

They’re early and have to wait for a little while for his appointment. Castiel finds himself staring down the corridors and at every opening door, petrified that _he_ will walk through.

Meg notices and gives him a look over the old _Alpha’s Fitness_ magazine she’s been flicking through for the last ten minutes. There’s a tasteful black and white shot of a muscular alpha with rippling bulging biceps on front cover. “Calm down Cas,” she drawls, scenting the hair with a sniff. Beta or not she seems able to sense Castiel’s agitation and nervousness. He must reek of it. “It won’t hurt when they cut your plaster off you big baby.”

Castiel rolls his eyes, but he can’t give her an explanation for the real reason he’s agitated, so he stays quiet. Finally they call him in for his x-ray. Afterwards there’s more waiting around, (this time Meg tries to distract him by ranking the alphas in the editorial shots of the fitness magazine in order of ‘bangability’), and then there’s a quick consultation with a doctor before finally the cast is cut off. Meg offers to come in and hold his hand, only half joking, but Castiel waves her off and she goes back to her magazine.

Under the plaster his arm is pale and strange looking - wrinkled like it’s been underwater. Frail. The doctor tells him he’s lucky, that he won’t have full mobility in it for months, but that it’s healing nicely and as long as he’s gentle with it, shouldn’t cause him any issues. Castiel remembers her from the accident. She was the doctor that the blonde nurse had fetched when he’d first woken up. Barnes her ID says. The same name as the one on his prescriptions.

There’s something stilted in their interaction, and Castiel assumes it’s the elephant in the room. That he’d scent-mated with her colleague that night. She makes no mention of it however and Castiel is thankful for her discretion. The last thing he wants to do is talk about it.

As he gets up to leave, he gets a whiff of something warm and spicy on her that makes his heart skip in his chest though and maybe she _will_ mention it. He stumbles a little. She steadies him with a hand to his shoulder. “Are you alright?” she asks. “Not feeling light-headed?”

Castiel shakes his head. “I’m fine thank you,” he tells her, extracting himself and stepping away.

She hesitates like she wants to ask him something and he can’t have that so he nods stupidly, says “Thank you,” again and more or less runs from the room.

Meg stands up and tosses the alpha magazine aside carelessly. “All good?” she asks, giving him and his arm a thorough once-over.

Castiel nods again and tries to calm himself as she falls into step beside him.

His skin feels pricked and flushed despite the frigid air-conditioning and he has an awful urge to turn around and run back to the consultation room, to ask Dr Barnes _where is he?_

She’d know exactly who he was talking about, and she’d tell him.

It’s bad enough knowing that he works here - if Castiel knew who he was, where to find him exactly, he doesn’t think he’d have the will power to resist the draw of his instincts. The nameless alpha smells so _good._ Just that stale hint of his scent lingering on the doctor had been enough to make Castiel stumble with sudden jarring want.

It’s insane. It makes no sense. He doesn’t _know_ this person, this alpha. The way his body responds to him, the way the stupid scent-bond clings to him when by all rights it should have tattered and faded away long ago, is horrifying. Castiel has been attracted to alphas before, but nothing like this.

As he strides through the hospital corridors leading Meg towards the exit, his underwear slides against his skin, slippery with a little slick. Just that one lungful of _his_ scent has Castiel’s body wet and wanting. Not for the first time in the last few weeks, he’s pitifully grateful that Meg is a beta and less sensitive to subtle changes in scent. She doesn’t tease him or make any comment when he ducks into a restroom to cleans himself up, disgusted with his reaction. There’s only a little dampness to his underwear, easily sponged off with tissue paper, and it’s easy enough to wipe up the slick mess where he’s leaking. Harder to stop the burn of shame in his cheeks though.

The bathroom smells like urine, shit, bleach and cheap air freshener. It does wonders clearing Castiel’s nose of that cloying hint of _mate,_ and he feels himself settle down, all trace of arousal fading, thank god.

Mercifully they make it to the exit without encountering any more of the alpha’s colleagues or the man himself and Castiel slips into the passenger seat of Meg’s pretentious little sportscar with her none the wiser to the source of his odd behavior. There’d been talk of lunch, but she can see he’s not in the mood, even if she can’t smell exactly why, and she drops him straight at home instead.

When he gets upstairs he has a very long shower. The citrus scent of his body wash and the flowery chemical smell of his shampoo help dull his senses, drum the memory of that other, sweeter _better_ scent from his mind. With a slightly clearer head, he texts Balthazar and lets him now that the cast is off and his trip to the hospital was uneventful. His phone chimes in a near instantaneous response and Castiel knows that Balthazar has been waiting to hear from him, worrying. It makes him smile down at the screen of his phone.

Balthazar is home late, after Castiel has already gone to bed, but it’s a Friday and that’s normal. He usually has drinks with clients or co-workers to mark the end of the week and today is no different. From the sounds Castiel hears filter up from downstairs, he’s brought a few home with him. Even the thick walls of the house do little to soften Uriel’s booming laughing. And there are other voices, girls.

Castiel sighs and rolls over in his bed a few times, puffing his pillows and glaring at his alarm clock. It’s blinking 3:17am. His arm aches a little, a slow throb deep in the bone, and combined with the stress of the day, he has to restrain the urge to march downstairs and yell at Balthazar and his guests. He gets to back to sleep though, eventually.

It’s late when he wakes up, after 11. The house is silent. The door to Balthazar’s bedroom is shut tight when Castiel shuffles down to the kitchen to make himself coffee.

The living room is a complete mess. Castiel stands in the doorway and takes it in with a mixture of annoyance and amusement as he waits for his coffee to brew. There are bottles and glasses on almost every flat surface, someone has drunkenly attempted to eat what looks like pad thai and gotten it all over one of the couches, and the stink of cigar and cigarette smoke hangs thick in the air.

Under the stale smells of smoke and alcohol is Balthazar’s grassy beta scent, Uriel’s sharper Alpha tone, two fresh young beta scents that Castiel doesn’t recognize and could be either male or female, and the sickly sweet scent of an unmated omega. The last has Castiel’s hackles rising and all traces of amusement at Balthazar’s antics burn away in an instant.

He normally finds other omegas entirely unremarkable, pleasant and vaguely familiar smelling even, but since the accident they have him tensing up almost as much as when he scents an aggressive Alpha. Uriel isn’t so bad since Castiel’s known him almost as long as he’s known Balthazar and he’s long gotten over his instinctive mistrust of the man, but usually alphas have Castiel uncomfortable and suspicious.

And now he’s having similar reactions to omegas, a fact that adds yet another level of aggravation to his shitty ‘half-mated-to-a-stranger’ situation. Omegas put up with enough from alphas and even betas without having to deal with aggression from their own kind. The itch of annoyance and hissing anger he feels at scenting another omega in his home feels like a betrayal. He can’t seem to help it though. He picks up the empties and carries the glasses to the kitchen, trying to ignore the stink of the place, but the foreign scents, especially Uriel and the strange Omega, have his skin crawling.

He gives up and decides to head out for a few hours. He texts Meg to see if she wants lunch as pay back for driving him the day before, but she doesn’t respond and since her phone is basically an extension of her arm, Castiel assumes she’s still asleep. Lunch at his favorite coffee shop still sounds good though, and a few hours studying at the campus library is probably a better way to spend his day than hanging out with Meg. He missed a lecture the day before he needs to watch anyway. And hopefully by the time he comes back Balthazar will have tidied up after himself, (he’s fairly good at feeling guilty when he’s hung over), and the scents of the strangers in their home will have dissipated.

It’s chilly so Cas pulls on a coat and scarf before he leaves. Outside in the fresh air he instantly feels much better, the irritation of being stuck inside the house lifting up off him like a weight from his shoulders.

It’s only a short walk and the café he likes isn’t too busy, despite it being midday. It’s generally much quieter on the weekend. Castiel will probably be able to claim his favorite table even - the one tucked away in the back corner with the big comfy wingback chair with the warm old leather scent. Sure enough there are a couple of people waiting for drinks at the counter but the place is only about half full. A quick glance towards the back shows his usual table clean and bare. Castiel’s mood improves even more.

The typical array of fresh baked cakes and breads are on display and he inhales deeply as he looks over the glass counter. Since they bake onsite, the cafe always smells amazing, spicy and sweet. It’s part of the reason Castiel loves the place so much. The first time he’d wandered in, just after he enrolled, it had been the heavenly aroma of the apple cinnamon muffins fresh from the oven that had lured him in off the street. In fact, that seems to be what he can smell now. That and the nutty caramel smell of the delicious looking, cream-topped monstrosity of a drink that one of the baristas is currently working on.

Castiel’s stomach gurgles emptily. He’d intended to buy a coffee, one of their open flatbread sandwiches and maybe a fresh squeezed juice for lunch, but now that he’s standing here inhaling cinnamon and apple, it’s the muffins that have his mouth watering. He figures he deserves it after his sleepless night and ordeal at the hospital.

It takes a few minutes for his coffee, but Castiel waits at the end of the counter rather than sitting down and making one of the girls bring it to him. He picks at his muffin while he waits. It’s warm and sweet, but not quite what he was smelling he doesn’t think.

Maybe it was the gingerbread, or the carrot cake?

Not that it matters - the muffin is still delicious. He smiles and thanks the barista when she calls out his name and then takes his coffee and starts weaving his way between the little tables towards his spot at the back.

He has to shimmy a little to get past the two beta women in yoga gear gossiping over lunch at the table closest to his favorite seat, minding his coffee in case it spills, (and his laptop bag so he doesn’t whack either of them with it), and so he’s distracted and he doesn’t actually realize that someone’s already sitting in his favorite spot until he’s more or less standing on top of them.

The first thing he notices is the way the man is slumped back into the big chair, hands shoved in the front pocket of his oversized hoodie, his tired green eyes blinking up at Castiel like he just disturbed him from a nap. The second thing he notices is that tired or not, the man is very attractive.

He also notes, distractedly, the cup sitting empty save for some gritty dregs right on the edge of the little table, off to the side where he couldn’t see from the counter.

The man looks up in disgruntled confusion and there’s an apology on the tip of Castiel’s tongue when the stranger flinches bodily, jerking up straight in his seat. His eyes bore into Castiel’s and his nostrils flare as he scents the air obviously. Castiel doesn’t recognize him, not really, he’d been delirious, drugged and in shock the last time he’d seen this man, not to mention the fact that he’d been staring up at him upside down. But he _knows_ him just the same. Feels something wake up, a puzzle piece slot perfectly into a gaping hole he’d been carefully ignoring for weeks.

Castiel inhales deeply, unable to resist the need. The man stands and with the movement Castiel gets a thick mouthful of that wonderful _smell._ His scent. Nutmeg and leather and wood. Alpha. _Mate._

He gasps. His head spins. Castiel actually feels himself unravel.

Something snaps deep inside and then unspools and leaves him half-mad. Distantly he registers that his leg is wet and hot. He looks down and sees his coffee cup on its side at his feet and his gnawed on muffin rolling across the carpet. The rich bitterness of the spilled coffee is thick in his nose and it rouses him for a moment, clears the fog long enough for him to think guiltily ‘ _oh no that might stain’_ but then his alpha lets out a low rumble from deep in his chest and Castiel is stepping towards him, powerless to deny the pull, reaching for him with a low whine in his throat and his head tilted to one side, offering his neck, his submission.

 

* * *

 

His mate is even more beautiful than Dean remembers. The moment he tilts that perfect jaw, dark with the slight hint of stubble, and offers the line of his throat, Dean is lost.

He pulls his omega, _(Castiel!_ his brain sings, _castielcastiel!),_ closer, shoves his face into that warm sweet smelling heaven and huffs little shallow breaths into his skin, tasting him. Already his scent has changed. It was sweet and perfect when Dean looked up and found him standing there, but now it’s deepened and somehow gotten even better, even sweeter. A minute ago Dean was ready to pass out, exhausted after a long shift and weeks of crappy sleep, but now he feels more alive than… than _ever._ Feels strong and powerful. Elated.

His omega is whining, high and needy, and Dean’s vaguely aware that he’s growling or rumbling or making some ridiculous noise right back at him.  His dick feels like an iron bar in his pants, throbbing in time with his racing heartbeat. It’s a haze settling over his mind, shrouding his thoughts until all he can focus on is his need, his need to claim his omega, to knot him and mark him and fuck him full. Mate him.

The part of him that hasn’t regressed entirely is aware that they’re in public, (that they’re in the coffee shop at the bottom of his apartment building actually), and that there are two scandalized betas a few feet to their right and half-a-dozen other people staring from around the shop. But he bites at his omega’s neck all the same, not hard, just a teasing scrape, making him shudder and pull at Dean demandingly. Smug pride wells up inside him at that, at the lean body pressed up tight against him, at the long fingers yanking at his clothes, trying to get at his skin.

His mate wants him. His mate wants him _so bad_. Dean can smell it, feel it, and it’s intoxicating. He should knot him right here so every sees it, so everyone knows that this gorgeous omega is _Dean’s._

Except no. _No_. They don’t get to see his mate, only Dean does. His teeth catch a little sharper at his sweet skin, he growls a little lower. Castiel is _his._ He needs to take him some place warm and soft and claim him. Somewhere safe.

_Upstairs,_ his brain tells him, reminding him of his bed with all the soft blankets and pillow, the nest that doesn’t make him cringe at all anymore.

Dean is proud all over again. He tugs his mate through the stupidly crowded shop with its spindly little tables and rickety chairs that get in the way and fall over. But his mate wiggles in his hold, rubs up against him wanton and demanding, begging soft against his ear - “Alpha alpha need you...”

“Bed,” Dean tells him, and Castiel’s blue eyes widen and he stops fighting, lets Dean drag him out of the shop and into the building.

Old Mrs Moseley is in the elevator when he pulls his mate inside, shopping bags in her arms. “Mate,” Dean tells her excitedly, stroking a hand through Castiel’s dark hair, cupping the shape of his beautiful, _perfect,_ face. “My mate. Cas. Cas _tiel_.”

She nods, eyes wide. “I can see that Dean dear. Congratulations.”

Dean grins and shoves his face into the crock of Castiel’s neck and licks and bites at his sweet sweet skin. Cas pulls at his hair and trips them back into the wall then grinds up against him and he’s all warm and sex-smelling and Dean can feel his mate’s dick, hard and insistent, up against his hip. He forgets all about his nice old neighbor and grabs at Cas’s tight little ass. He moans and jerks his hips into Dean’s and he’s -- _fuck_ \-- he must be _so_ wet.

Even through his jeans but Dean can feel the damp of it, smell it and almost taste it on the back on his throat sweet and so so good. His mouth his watering. When he licks into Castiel’s mouth he tastes sweet there too, like apple and cinnamon, and _how_ can he be so perfect? This must be a dream.

“Dean. Dean dear.”

It’s nearly impossible to draw himself away, but Dean manages to lift his head, ignore the soft whine of loss on those wet, pink lips. Mrs Moseley is standing in the hall, holding the lift open for them with her cane. Dean hadn’t realized it had even stopped. It’s chiming softly, the doors jerking back and forth as they try to shut.

“Take your mate home,” Mrs Mosely tells him. She has her shopping awkwardly clutched in one arm. Dean thinks that he should offer to carry it for her, but his arms are full of Castiel. “And you take good care of him you hear?” she adds, raising an eyebrow sternly.

He nods because of _course_ he’s going to take care of his mate. Castiel tugs at him, hands sliding up under Dean’s clothes, his mouth hot and wet at Dean’s throat. “Bed,” Dean reminds him, because tempting as it is to shove Castiel against the wall and fuck him where he stands, Mrs Moseley is right – Dean has to look after his mate. Protect him. Keep him safe. Dean has to get Cas safe in his bed before he tears his clothes off and tastes him all over.

His door isn’t far and he manages to drag his mate over to it. He reaches into his pocket for his keys but Cas uses the fact that he’s stopped moving to pull at his fly. The top button practically pings as it snaps open and his dick is so hard the zip is half undone before Cas even has a chance to tug on it. The salty smell of his leaking dick clouds up between them and then Cas is panting, his hips fucking up against Dean desperately, and when he shoves his hand down Dean’s shorts to paw at his dick, it’s shaking. Dean has his keys in hand but his mate has a tight grip around his aching cock and his tongue in his mouth and he can’t help the rock of his hips as he pins him to the door and starts fucking into his hand.

“DEAN.”

Cas is whining more or less non-stop now, humping Dean’s thigh and squeezing his dick. Dean pulls at his jeans, manages to shove his hand down the back and get a handful of perfect ass. The tips of his fingers slide through _wet_ and Cas shudders and gasps, grinding back into the touch desperately. The sweet scent of his arousal, of his slick, of his fertile perfect fuckablity blossoms under Dean’s nose and his dick throbs, the tingle of his burgeoning knot starting low at the base. Cas jerks at him sloppily, wet with how Dean’s leaking and even that’s hot, that Cas’s got Dean’s come all over his fingers and --

_“DEAN WINCHESTER.”_

Something pokes Dean in the side, _hard,_ and he yanks Castiel impossibly closer even as he turns, snarling, ready to tear apart the threat, whatever it is.

Mrs Moseley is standing a few feet away, holding out her walking stick.  “Get inside boy!” she snaps, prodding him again with it. “For goodness sake! Take your mate _inside.”_

Dean blinks, remembers his mission. “Bed,” he says.

“Yes, _yes -_ get him into bed!” Mrs Moseley raps the end of her stick against the door, right next to the Dean’s hand – which is clutching his keys. “Now Dean. Be a good alpha and take your omega _to bed_.”

“Good alpha,” Dean agrees, but he’s looking down at Cas, not Mrs Moseley. “Good alpha for my mate.”

Castiel ignores Dean and Mrs Mosely and instead sucks wet fingers into his mouth, and Dean can smell it, knows that it’s the taste of _him_ that has Cas’s eyes rolling into the back of his head, that it’s the mess he made all over Cas’s fingers that’s smeared wet across his chin. _“Alpha…”_ he whines, twisting between Dean’s body and the door.

There’s another sharp rap against the door. Right next to his head this time.

_“Dean Winchester! Get your butt inside that apartment right this instant or so help me..!”_

It’s just enough, just barely, to clear the fog for a moment.

It takes a few seconds, but he manages to get the key in the door, and then the other key in the dead lock and then it’s open and he carries Cas inside since his omega is more or less hanging off him and trying to fuck him through their clothes while simultaneously fellating his own right hand…

Dimly Dean hears the door slam shut behind him.

Cas seems to realize they have arrived at their destination and he stumbles to his feet, dumping his bag to the floor with a thud, quickly followed by his coat and his scarf. Dean helps him, pulling his mate’s shirt over his head and then sinking to his knees to yank his jeans and underwear down his thighs. Cas’s dick bobs out, red and wet, and he smells so _good_ that Dean just _has_ to learn forward and taste him. He makes the most beautiful broken sound, hands knotting in Dean’s hair and back arching. Dean grabs at his narrow hips and shoves him back against the wall so he can suck and lick at him messy and hungry.

He tastes like come, bitter and strange, not sweet like Dean just _knows_ his slick will be, but it has Dean drooling and moaning in ecstasy all the same. Cas scrambles against the wall like he might fall over and something falls off the little hall table to their right with a smash, but Dean doesn’t care. He can taste him, taste his mate, has his scent thick all over him, coating his mouth and chin. He wants to rub it all over himself, roll around in it until he stinks gloriously of Castiel.

“Alpha,” Cas moans, breathe hiccuping desperately. “Ugh.. alpha, _need you...”_

 

__

 

His voice is deep and low, goes straight to Dean’s already aching dick. He groans around a warm mouthful of cock and Cas twists in his hold, like he’s simultaneously trying to fuck Dean’s mouth and grind his ass back against the wall at the same time. Dean adjusts his grip, slides his hands further around those sharp hips of his until his fingers meet _wet_ and suddenly Dean’s pulling off Cas’s dick and spinning him around. His jeans are still around his knees and he almost trips, has to scramble and clutch at the wall for balance as Dean spreads his cheeks and buries his face where he’s wet and hot and sweet.

Castiel wails and thrashes, hips shoving back greedily. Dean laps at him like a mad man. He tastes so fucking _good_ , like the best thing in the world. Dean’s more or less suffocating himself licking and sucking and rubbing his whole fucking face against Cas’s perfect ass but he doesn’t give a damn. He gets his tongue inside and his mate screams for him and oxygen seems unimportant compared to the feeling of Cas’s ass clenching hot and tight around his tongue, of lapping at his sweet slick straight from the source.

“Alpha _please!”_ he cries, spreading his legs and grinding back into Dean’s face. “Need it, need you!”

Dean shoves his tongue in as deep as he can get it, spears him open, savors the way the taste of him explodes over this tastebuds for as long as he can, and then pulls back and climbs to his feet. Castiel clutches at him as he turns, unsteady, hobbled by his pants, so Dean just picks him up.

_Bed,_ he thinks. _Bed mate knot fuck Cas Cas Cas-_

His bed is soft. His bed is wonderful. His bed is a warm nest lined with soft pillows and blankets that he settles his beautiful mate down in the middle of.

Cas kicks off his shoes, toes off his pants, staring at Dean all the while, blue eyes flared up bright omega gold. Dean doesn’t get the chance to finally admire him completely naked though, because the moment he’s unhindered Cas rolls onto his stomach and cants his hips up, presenting his heat-slick hole. Dean’s on him before he even realizes he’s going to move, exultant snarl twisted up in the back of his throat.

His pants are already undone, his weeping dick hanging out.  He tears at  his hoodie, his shirt yanked off with it, but Cas is rising up in his knees, shoving back against him and whining and the feel of him, wet and hot against Dean’s stomach, his thigh, is too much. He grabs at his hips, lines their bodies up, and pushes into the fluttering clasp of him.

Castiel wails, low and sweet, his body clenching like a hot, wet vice around Dean’s dick, pulling at him like it’s trying to suck him deeper, swallow him whole. “Alpha alpha _yes_ _yesssss_ \--" Castiel’s back arches like a cat’s as he opens up for Dean like he was made for him.

_And he was,_ Dean thinks, delirious and exultant. He groans and shifts his knees on the mattress so he can press in the last few inches, hilting himself as deep as he can go. Castiel squirms on the end of his dick, moans _“Alphaaaa_ ,” again, a sated drawl now instead of a needy whine.

Dean bucks helpless against him. “Dean,” he pants - because that’s what Castiel should be moaning, not ‘alpha alpha!’ like a cheap heat-porno, like he doesn’t care who’s fucking him - “My name’s Dean. Call me Dean.”

“ _Dean,”_ Castiel moans, like he’s never heard anything sexier in his life. “Dean, _Dean,”_ a pause, a hitched little gasp, “ _Fuck_ me. _Mate_ me Dean.”

Dean flattens himself over him and does just that, slams into him deep and fast, gets him panting and choking and chanting his name. Cas loves it, laps it up, begs for more. Dean feels like he might burst into flames with how amazing it is, how fucking _incredible_ it feels to have _his mate_ wrapped around his dick. “Mate,” he pants, feeling his knot starting to swell, the sharp ache of it. “My mate. My _sweet_ mate. _Perfect_ mate.” The words are honeyed on his tongue, even sweeter because he never thought he’d get to say them. “I’m yours and your _mine_ Cas, my mate, my ‘mega.”

“Yessss…” Cas hisses, twisting on his dick and stretching his neck so that the line of it calls out to Dean temptingly, begging for his bite, his claim. Dean’s got his teeth buried in the soft flesh before he even knows it’s going to happen.

Cas gasps and thrashes, ass clenching tight around Dean’s dick as he goes prone at his claiming bite and comes into the sheets beneath them. The smell of it is thick in the air and has Dean biting at him all over again again, shoving him down into the mattress and fucking in as deep as he can get. Cas is all soft and liquid beneath him, canting his hips and spreading his legs wide, giving what Dean’s instincts are clamoring for him to _take._

His knot finally swells up, thick and aching and locking Dean tight inside, inside his mate’s body, and then he’s coming, white heat pulsing out of him in the best sort of agony, drenching Castiel’s insides with his scent, his seed - _mating_ him. He wants to scream, wants to shout and sing Castiel’s praises with how fucking _amazing_ this is, but his jaw is clenched tight where his teeth are buried in his neck, and all he can do is whimper and moan and suck on Cas’s skin as he grinds his knot into him, ties them together, mates them.

Cas reaches back, grabs at Dean’s ass, tries to draw him in even deeper, and that touch there finally snaps whatever instinct was holding Dean in thrall and his jaw relaxes, he can finally let go. “ _Cas_ ,” he gasps, awed, drunk on him. “Mate. So good. Best. Love you.” And it’s all true, there’s not a doubt in Dean’s mind that he loves Castiel, even though they’re basically strangers. His omega purrs at the praise, rolls his hips, his ass massaging Dean’s knot in a way that’s mind meltingly good and draws a loud groan and another shuddering spurt of come out of him.

When his wits finally start to sharpen a bit, when he can do more than just rub against Castiel and grind helpless into him where they’re tied, he carefully rearranges them and tucks Cas in his arms, wraps himself around him to keep him safe and warm.

Dean’s never knotted like this before. Never mated. It’s… warm. It’s incredible. It’s like they’re one person. It’s like all the stories he never quite believed – like something almost magical. He can smell Castiel, _mate_ and _home_ and sated happiness, everywhere, all over his skin, sinking _into_ his skin. It’s giddy, the bone deep joy he feels. Love. Perfect love. Some distant part of him knows it’s just chemicals in his brain, dopamine and oxytocin, but that doesn’t make it feel less amazing, any less real.

He loves Castiel so much it almost hurts. The shape of it in his head is too much to comprehend.

Castiel is his mate. His _mate._ Dean nuzzles against his soft dark hair. His perfect fucking mate. Presses a kiss to his temple. His Cas. Castiel.

His eyes are shut but he wiggles closer to Dean, into his kisses, and hums, pleased. Dean feels a vibration where they are plastered against each other, a rattle deep in Cas’s chest, and then a moment later Cas sighs and a soft rumble follows as he falls in to a contented purr.

Dean’s heart clenches in pained ecstasy. No one’s ever purred for him before. Parent’s sometimes do it for their babies, nursing mother’s especially, but otherwise it’s something that only happens between mated pairs, and even then, not always.

Castiel must trust him, _love_ him.

Dean pulls him in even tighter, presses his face to Cas’s back and listens to the quiet hum of it in awed disbelief. “Gonna be so good to you,” he promises, heart full to bursting. Aching.

And then with a stuttered rattle, something catches in the back of his throat and he’s purring for the first time in his life, purring for Castiel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so purring is a thing now? idk.


	6. Chapter 6

They spend three days in Dean’s apartment, mostly in Dean’s bed. The first day it’s mostly mating, Castiel on his belly, presenting for his alpha, Dean knotting him and biting dark marks into his neck and shoulders. What little conversation they manage is basic at best. As their hormones cool it turns into sex, Castiel riding Dean or lying on his back with his knees hooked over Dean’s shoulders, more about pleasure than primal mating urge.

Dean tries not to knot him every time because he knows Cas must be sore, but it’s still new between them and it’s hard to resist. When he’s knotting inside him, Dean goes all soft-eyed and affectionate, showers Castiel with kisses and slurred declarations of love. And even though he _is_ sore, Castiel craves that deep stretching ache, the feel of his mate buried inside of him, filling him up with his seed until he’s wet with it, soaked in his scent. It satisfies some starved part of him, makes him feel warm and safe and loved.

And whenever Dean is tied to him, he feels the slow rumble of his purr, something he’s never heard, something he wasn’t even sure he could do. Purring and all other ‘primitive’ things like scent-marking were frowned upon in his home. They were improper. Crude. Dean seems to delight in it though. Whenever Cas feels that quiet, contented, vibration low under his ribs, Dean starts kissing him and his own deeper rumble soon joins Castiel’s. He likes the way they sound together. Lying in his mate’s arms, tied together, warm and sated with Dean’s contented purr low in his ear is maybe the most blissful he’s ever felt.

They talk more, later on. Dean tells Castiel about his home town in Kansas, about how he decided to be a doctor, _(‘I wanted to fix things, help people,’)_ , about how he followed his little brother Sam out to California when he got into Stanford. Castiel doesn’t tell Dean much about his own family in return, and his brain thoughtfully skitters back from any thoughts of Balthazar, but he talks a little about Anna, and about his studies, how he’s in the final year of his masters in anthropology and how his mother thinks he’s studying international business. At some point Dean trails careful fingers over the scar on his arm and asks, so Castiel tells him what he’d been doing the night he got hurt and ended up bleeding all over him in the ER.

“I wanted to see you,” he tells him after, because he’s drunk and stupid on his smell, his touch and his sweet words. “I thought about you all the time, but I was scared.”

“I thought about you too,” Dean tells him, pulling him close and pressing the words soft into his mouth. “I wanted you so bad. Thought I’d never see you again. I’m so glad you’re here Cas, so glad you’re mine.”

Castiel is glad to, can’t think of anything worse than being parted from Dean.

Of course when the mating heat cools from his blood, it’s all very different all of a sudden.

*

He wakes up in a bed that smells of _alpha_ and _omega_ and _sex sex sex_ , sore all over, his ass aching and his neck throbbing. Dean is slotted in behind him, warm and sweet-scented. Their legs are entangled and he has an arm thrown over Cas’s side while the other is serving as Cas’s pillow.

He’s never lain in anyone’s arms like this. It feels wonderful. If he could only ignore the rising panic and horror turning his guts to ice, ignore the fact that they are both naked and he can feel the evidence of their last mating tacky between his bruised thighs, he might just lay there and bask in the novel sensation of being held close and safe by his mate.

His _mate._

That does it. Castiel untangles himself as quickly as he can. He’s thirsty, ( _Dehydration from all that slick,_ his brain tells him. _From how wet you got so Dean could knot you, **mate** **you,** over and over – how many times?), _so he stumbles to Dean’s bathroom and drinks straight from the tap. He can feel come leaking from his ass, thin dribbles of it sliding down his thighs. He uses the toilet and tries to expel what he can and clean himself up. He’s a mess though, tender and sore and _filthy_ back there. When he’s done all he can with tissue paper, he stands, washes his hands and drinks some more water. He’s still thirsty.

What he sees reflected in the mirror above the sink makes him feel sick. There are bites and hickeys ringing his neck and scattered across his collarbones. His nipples are red and puffy from where Dean had bitten and toyed with them, sucking and licking at the sensitive nubs until Castiel had been beside himself with it. There are more bruises on his hips. Teeth marks along his thighs. Come and slick dried in his pubic hair and crusted across his belly. There is no mystery to any of it, no denial of guilt he can cling to, he knows exactly where each mark on his skin came from. Remembers writhing under Dean, begging, craving his touch, pulling at him and screaming for him when his teeth scraped and bruised. _Marked_. _Owned._ He’d been in ecstasy when Dean made them, but when he touches them now they hurt. Sting.

Abruptly Castiel is completely awake and he realizes the full extent of what has happened. He has spent a heat begging for an alpha’s knot. He has let a complete stranger, someone whose _name_ he didn’t even know until he had his pants around his ankles, take him home and fuck him without so much as a condom. Let him knot him. Claim him. _Mate_ him. On his finger the gold band of his wedding ring glints.

Back in the bedroom Dean has rolled into the warm spot left by Castiel. There are livid red scratches all over his back and bites scattered across his broad shoulders. Castiel’s face burns as he remembers making them, scraping his fingernails down Dean’s broad shoulders and digging them into his ass, urging him on, demanding to be fucked harder, faster for _more more more._ His ass clenches in memory and the uncomfortable twitch of muscle and the wet feeling of slick bubbling out of him, or maybe more of Dean’s _come,_ has Cas taking a jerking step back. A floor board creaks beneath his bare heel.

Dean rolls over onto his back, and then over to his other side when the sting of Castiel’s scratches make his frown in his sleep. Castiel stands transfixed, frozen like a thief. Dean’s facing him now, needs to only open his eyes and then... and then… Castiel isn’t sure what exactly, but it would be bad he is certain. Those eyes stay shut though, thick lashes curled in neat crescents against his cheeks. His face is smooth and relaxed in sleep. There is blondish stubble on his cheeks and jaw, but he looks very young. There’s a scattering of freckles across his cheeks. His lips are pink and chapped, a hint of stubble burn there. Even in the cold sober light of regret, he is the most beautiful thing Castiel has ever laid eyes upon.

He is unashamedly alpha – tall and broad shouldered, all sharp teeth and muscle – but his face is boyish. No that is wrong. He has a face like a hero from some Greek tragedy, a strong masculine beauty. Taken individually he has the features of a handsome man – a strong jaw, high cheekbones and a straight nose – but combined with the delicate bow of his mouth, those long sooty eyelashes, (covering eyes Castiel recalls being _green_ when not alpha red and distractingly big and pretty), and the dusting of freckles across his cheeks, well, he looks like he should spend his days staring at his own reflection in a pool, or lounging around naked so people can just… admire him.

Just looking at him makes Castiel want to climb back into bed and kiss him awake, hear that deep voice of his, that faded hint of a mid-western drawl. See those soft green eyes open again. That _smile._ How tempting that is, despite everything, is what finally gives Castiel the strength to move. His jeans and shoes are abandoned on the floor near the end of the bed. He picks them up and quietly makes his way out of the room.

The apartment is small, but well furnished. Castiel has seen most of it, but he hadn’t really been paying attention to anything save Dean himself at the time. There is something spilt on the kitchen floor, things knocked over on the countertop. Castiel has a vivid flashback of them stopping to eat and him bending over that stone countertop and begging Dean to fuck him. Trying to shove the memory from his mind, he strides out into the living room – and there – there are the rest of his clothes, his things. A trail leading back to the front door, where his laptop bag and coat lay in a heap.

He thinks about showering, but Dean will surely wake, and besides, there’s no point. There’ll be no hiding what he’s done from Balthazar. Castiel dresses quickly. He has to pad back into the bedroom to locate his phone though, which must have fallen from the pocket of his jeans. Dean is still sleeping, but on his stomach now and clutching the pillow on what had been on Castiel’s side of the bed, his face buried in it.

For a moment Castiel just looks at him and his own fear and self-loathing is replaced by something else. Dean is young, beautiful and intelligent – he must be since he’s a doctor - and Castiel doesn’t delude himself into thinking the loss of a mate, no matter how temporary, will hold him back for long since any omega or beta would be thrilled to have him and he will replace Castiel easily enough - but it will hurt him.

There is no doubt of it.

He will wake up alone and feel abandoned and rejected. Will go through the trauma of a broken mating bond. And he had been sweet, when he hadn’t been fucking Castiel into any nearby flat surface. Once the initial inferno of his rut and Castiel’s heat had faded, once his eyes had turned green, he’d been all soft deep kisses and promises, had looked at Castiel like he loved him, adored him, like it was more than just the mating fueling those words of his. Castiel doesn’t _want_ to hurt him, Dean is not to blame for his biology any more than he himself is, so, he hesitates. Stands there and tries to think of some better way to do this.

As if he can sense what he’s thinking, Dean shifts in his sleep and sniffs loudly, scenting the air and frowning. Belatedly Castiel realizes he’s been stinking up the place with his hurt and upset, a sure fire way to get his – _an -_ alpha’s attention. He backs away quietly, ears pricked for movement from the bedroom as he pulls on his coat and hoists his bag over his shoulder. Just as he’s swinging the door closed, he thinks he might hear a confused “Cas?”, but the door clicks shut behind him, deadlock snapping into place, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

He doesn’t wait for the lift, he uses the stairs, and he doesn’t slow from a jog to a walk until there are half a dozen blocks between Dean’s apartment building and himself. The mating bond stretches out between them, a hook in his chest. It aches more with every step and his eyes sting and blur, but he keeps walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh cas u dumbass.


	7. Chapter 7

“Cas?”

Dean’s speaking before he’s even aware he’s awake because something is _wrong._ It beats at him, drives him from the warm bed and has him stumbling naked and half asleep through his apartment. There’s a bitter taint in the air, Cas’s delicious scent gone sour. He checks the bathroom, the study, the kitchen, but it’s not until he’s standing in the living room staring at the front door that it clicks.

Cas’s things are gone. And not in a ‘gone to get coffee and breakfast to eat in bed’ sort of way - shoes and wallet and a coat yanked on - in a ‘gone’ kind of way. In a ‘not a single sock left behind’ kind of way. In a ‘not coming back’ kind of way.

He looks on the coffee table, the fridge, the kitchen counters, but there’s no note. No phone number, no explanation, not even an apology.

He doesn’t know why he’s so shocked. He doesn’t know Castiel, not really. Despite how he’d  avoided even thinking it over the past few days, he _does_ know that he’s married however, and that he had, weeks and weeks ago, made the decision not to seek Dean out despite their scent-mating. But when he’d stumbled across Dean down in the coffee shop Dean had been thrown into a mating rut almost immediately. From the moment he’d looked up and seen him, caught a whiff of Cas’s scent after weeks craving it, pining for him, the only thing Dean had been thinking was _mate mate mate._ He hadn’t given a single thought to Castiel’s _husband._

So neither of them had been thinking clearly, and really, given the situation, this shouldn’t be so surprising. Except for Dean… for Dean, there isn’t any ‘situation’. He’s single, he has a job and a decent apartment – there’s no reason he can’t take a mate. The fact that he’d been scentdrunk and out of his mind with lust didn’t really matter, in the sober light of day he still wants Castiel, wants him here, in his apartment, in his arms, where he’s supposed to be.

But Castiel must have woken up feeling something very different. The acrid stink of it lingers. Dean scents the air and beneath the thick fog of sex he can taste distress. Pain. Hurt. His omega’s. His mate’s. Even though he knows he’s the cause of it, his instincts are clamoring for him to go find Castiel and make it better. But he can’t, because _he’s_ the one that hurt him.

Castiel’s made his decision. He’s left. He’s gone back to his husband.

He’s probably feeling guilty and used, taken advantage of.

Except… Dean had meant it. He’d been delirious, but he’d meant every word, every touch, and he thought Cas had too. He hadn’t given it much thought, but he’d assumed they’d sort out whatever mess they woke up to together.

It had felt so real. Just like the stories his mom told him, like the feeling Sam described with Jess. Cas was only his for a few days, but the thought of him _gone_ , that he’d woken up and instantly wanted no part of Dean or anything he offered, not even a _goodbye_ , it… it leaves him dazed.

It’s rejection, complete and final.

Castiel doesn’t want Dean, doesn’t want to be his mate.

He’s gone. He’s not Dean’s, he never was.

Dean’s completely unprepared for how fucking _devastating_ the realization is. It’s like someone _died_.

Something aches deep in his chest and suddenly he can’t breathe and his legs go all strange and he finds himself crumpling down to the floor. He sits for a moment, just trying to breathe, to not hyperventilate, but even that is too much and he ends up lying down and then it just gets even uglier. His face is wet and he’s _crying_ and there’s a pathetic little ‘uuhhh-uhh’ noise coming out of his throat that he seems to have absolutely zero control over.

He ends up curling up on his side and sobbing into the living room rug. Naked. The part of him that’s shocked and appalled by his reaction is telling him how embarrassing this is all going to be later on when he thinks back on it. A naked panic attack? Thank god there’s no one around to see.

Eventually he’s able to climb unsteadily to his feet and stumble back to bed. The room reeks of Castiel. Of _mate_ and _sex_ and _home_ and everything that Dean’s ever wanted most in the world.

His body loses its shit again, like he’s a puppet whose strings have been cut, but this time there’s a soft bed to land in. But that just makes it worse because everything smells like Cas. Like sweet omega. Like Dean’s mate. The pain in his chest increases and Dean seriously wonders if he’s going to have a heart attack, he sees spots in his vision, feels his thoughts get blurry, but eventually realizes he’s just hyperventilating, and probably on the verge of fainting, not dying.

When he wakes up again his head is clearer, but it aches. His body aches too, in a way he’s never experienced before. Long weekends with adventurous betas were one thing, but a three day mating frenzy was quite another. He can’t even remember how many times he and Castiel fucked. The way his dick is raw and tender and his hips and ass bruised, implies it was more or less as many times as humanly possible.

He showers, carefully and thoroughly, getting as much of Castiel’s scent off him as he can. To his shame he starts crying again when he strips the bed to shove the bedding into the washer, an ugly, mournful, whine threading through his gasps and snotty sobs, but he just ignores his jagged hormonal responses. He knows they’re normal. Estranged matings were common enough, he’s seen people come in, knows the symptoms. He’ll be a fucking mess for a few days, will have to call in sick…

He groans at the thought of that conversation. He vaguely remembers texting Dr Barnes, (yesterday? The day before?), spending the better part of half an hour typing out a two sentence message while Castiel rubbed up against him and sucked hickeys into his neck. The thought of having to call her and admit that the mating was estranged, immediately, of the gossip _that_ little tidbit will generate, has Dean sinking to the laundry floor and shoving his head in his hands. The washer sloshes and churns at his back. He pulls a dirty t-shirt from the laundry basket beside him and uses it to wipe the wet mess off his face.

He lets himself wallow for a few minutes and then goes to find his phone. It’s on the floor near the bed, tossed aside carelessly, and of course, dead. He plugs it into the charger on his bedside table and turns it on. It dings and trills at him with a dozen messages and missed calls. Ignoring them Dean calls Pam.

When it goes to voicemail he’s relieved.“Hey doc,” Dean says. “So, um. Things didn’t go so well.” He aims for flippant and casual, but he’s pretty sure he’s failing. Miserably. He’s not crying though, so that’s something at least. “It didn’t work out so I’ll need a few days to clear my head. Can you sort that with HR and let me know the details?  Thanks.”

He ends the call and then tosses the thing aside. The bed is stripped back to the bare mattress but he can still smell Castiel.

He sleeps on the couch, or tries too, but after a few hours tossing and turning the lure of the bed is too much. Castiel’s scent has faded, but it still lingers in the air and it soothes that raw ache in his chest just enough that he can finally sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

There are dozens of missed calls and messages on his phone. It’s difficult, but Castiel forces himself to stop and call Balthazar. He’s almost home anyway, but he knows Balthazar will be worried and Cas needs to put him out of his misery as soon as possible.

He picks up immediately, voice panicked. _“Cassie!?”_

“Yes, it’s me.”

_“Oh thank god! I thought you were dead! That you’d been tossed in a river or hit by another drunk! Where are you? What happened? Are you okay?”_

If he didn’t feel so wretched the concern would probably make Castiel smile. “I’m fine and I’ll be home soon, I’ll… explain everything then, I just didn’t want you to worry longer than necessary.”

_“Well I’m glad you’re okay, I mean really, I wasn’t kidding about thinking you were dead or something awful had happened, but a call a few days ago would have been nice.”_

Castiel doesn’t bother delaying the inevitable. He’s already turning down their street, only a few minutes from home. “I went into heat,” he says.

 _“…Oh.”_ The number of things Balthazar manages to convey with just that one syllable is incredible.

“I’ll see you soon,” Castiel says then hangs up. It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t have to see Balthazar’s face as he puts two and two together and realizes what Castiel has done. Hopefully by the time he gets home he’ll have his façade up in place and they can talk about it civilly.

The house is spotless, all traces of Balthazar’s party what seems like a life time ago gone. The moment Castiel is through the door he’s pulled into a fierce hug. Balthazar is warm and his hold is firm but gentle. It is a very nice hug all in all, except he smells _wrong_ and the touch of him has Castiel shuddering in discomfort, makes his skin prickle and crawl. Balthazar feels him tense and releases him.

His eyes are a little red and there are heavy dark bags beneath them. Casitel finds himself thinking of Dean as he’d last seen him, young and beautiful. Some cruel part of his brain tells him that his husband is _old_ and that Dean is a much stronger mate.

“Are you okay?” he asks, looking over Castiel slowly. Luckily little is revealed under the coat and scarf. He scents him though, and beta or not, his nose wrinkles as he smells the thick scent of Alpha – of _Dean –_ clinging to Castiel. “Do you need to see a doctor?” he asks quietly, squeezing his shoulder. “Do we need to call the police?”

Castiel shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that. Just… Stupid.” He closes his eyes for a moment as tears prick hotly at them. “It was just like all the horror stories you hear,” he tells Balthazar. “I went into heat, he went into rut and… and it’s like my brain just, just stopped.”

“So it was mutual then?”

“Yes.”

“And he didn’t hurt you?”

Castiel shakes his head again.  “No.”

“Well, how about you… go have a nice long bath and I’ll let everyone know you’re home safe?”

Castiel grabs at him in sudden violence. “Don’t tell them!” he gasps, mortified, thinking of his mother’s disdain.

“Of course not, I’ll say you…” Balthazar frowns for a moment as he thinks. “I’ll say we had a fight and you needed some space and I over-reacted.”

 _“Thank you,”_ Castiel says. He doesn’t deserve Balthazar, he really doesn’t.

He showers first, using every soap and shampoo he can get his hands on. Then he climbs into a hot bath and scrubs at his skin. The marks don’t fade of course, that will take time, but the smell of sex does. Castiel thought he’d feel relieved when he washed the last of Dean’s sweat, his come, off his skin, except with the sex washed away a much larger betrayal is laid bare. His scent has changed. He no longer smells like unmated omega, he smells mated. There is something sharper buried in the familiar smell of his skin, something that smells like _alpha,_ something that smells like _Dean._

Castiel sits in the bath and shakes like a tuning fork. He wants, suddenly and desperately, to be back in Dean’s arms, in his bed. It is near painful, the compulsion. He could get dressed and if he caught a cab he could be kissing his mate in twenty minutes flat. Less maybe. He’d tell Dean that he was sorry he ran, but Dean was so sweet, so soft, he wouldn’t be mad, he’d tell Cas it was okay, that he understood, then pull him back into their nest and mate him again, take him deep and slow and tie them together.

Beneath the hot water Castiel feels his body throb and twitch, tired muscles rallying themselves from exhaustion, his dick swelling and that warm pulse in his ass that means he’s getting wet. The physicality of it is enough to disgust him back into his right mind.

He doesn’t _know_ Dean. Who knows what would happen if Castiel ran back to him. Maybe this time Dean would make sure he couldn’t leave. Or maybe, and for some reason the thought is worse, maybe he’d sneer at Castiel and shut the door in his face. Maybe outside of his rut he wouldn’t want Castiel at all. He’d never tried to find him after all, never looked him up even though he could have.

Balthazar knocks gently and asks him if he’s hungry, if he can get him anything. Castiel tells him he just wants to sleep and Balthazar returns with tea and a few of the pills he keeps around for sleeping off hangovers. Castiel takes them gratefully and curls up in his bed alone, praying desperately to wake up and find the whole thing has just been a dream.

Except he wakes up in the middle of the night crying and barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s throwing up bile and water. Balthazar comes and tries to comfort him, strokes his shoulder and tells him it’s okay. But it’s not. Castiel doesn’t want his best friend’s – his _husband’s_ \- hand cool on his brow or his scent jarring and wrong, pressing against him. All it does it bring more bile up from his empty stomach in rebellion. It’s not Balthazar his body wants near, it’s _Dean_.

He wants his mate. He wants his alpha.

 

* * *

  

Dean’s still not really over it when he goes back into work, but he had a full week off including the 3 days heat leave and that’s really all he can expect.

Everyone tiptoes around him, glancing at him out of the corner of their eyes and treating him like the newly bereaved. He ignores it, focuses all his attention on his work. His patients are a good distraction. He finds he can go hours without thinking about Castiel when he’s working. It’s just, every other hour of the day that’s a problem.

If he’d thought the pull of the scent-mating was bad, the estrangement of a full mating is agony. Dean can only sleep if he knocks himself out with enough valium to take down a small elephant, but that leaves him blurry and messed up for his next shift, so he just muddles through on an hour here and an hour there, sleeps like he hasn’t had to since med school. It fucking sucks, but it’s better than the humiliating crying jags he gets, when he’ll suddenly scent Castiel somewhere in his apartment and the pain of the rejection will flare up hot and raw like it’s happening all over again.

Of course his family know long before he speaks to them. Dr Barnes had told Jo who of course immediately called Sam, so his entirely family had known he was mated by the time he suddenly _wasn’t_ anymore. His mother wants him to come home, says he needs to take time off and let her look after him. Sam’s in agreement and shockingly, even his father who was openly jubilant the day Sam left the family home and there were only two alphas battling it out for dominance in the Winchester home, tells him he thinks it could be a good idea.

None of them _know_ though. None of them have any idea how Dean feels.

His mom’s pie isn’t going to fix the fucking _hole_ in his chest.

That kind of wound doesn’t just scab over and heal and he would know, he’s the goddamn doctor in the family. Estrangements just take time. There isn’t any cure. Any way to hurry it up.

He spends a month moping and avoiding all human contact where possible, and then Sam and Jess more or less stage an intervention. Jo helps them book leave for him behind his back, they pack his bags while he bitches and then forcibly drive him to the airport. Which is how he ends up back in Lawrence, Kansas, standing in the front room of the family house and sobbing into his mom’s blouse like a five year old with a skinned knee.

“It hurts,” he tells her, beyond caring at how pathetic he’s being.

“Oh sweetie,” she says, and he can scent the salt of her tears, her distress over his pain and he feels guilty but he can’t keep it in any longer.

“I need him - I need him and he’s _gone,”_ he says, his throat burning like he’s swallowed acid. “He doesn’t want me mom.”

She presses a kiss to his cheek. “Then he didn’t deserve you,” she tells him fiercely.

“I don’t know what to do mom,” he says. “It’s not getting better. I feel like I’m dying.”

“I know baby,” she tells him. “But it _will_ get better, I promise.” Just having her near, holding her close and savoring her familiar scent is a comfort, but she doesn’t _know_. She has no idea.

“You don’t smell like home anymore,” he whispers, broken, and she stiffens for a moment, shocked, before her arms tighten around him and she strokes at his hair, shushing him and shifting on her feet a little, rocking back and forth like she used to when he was little enough for her to pick and carry in her arms.

Dean swallows. “How do I… How does anyone?” _get over this feeling?_

He knows they do, people divorce, people are widowed, it happens all the time. How do they get over the raw agony of a tattered bond though? No amount of alimony or prayer or whatever the hell else Dean can think of would help. Even booze doesn’t help, just makes him even more prone to sobbing brokenly into that pillow that still faintly smells like Cas.

“I wish I knew baby,” his mom says. “I think it’s just time.”

He knows she’s right, but that doesn’t make him hate the truth any less.

*

His room is almost exactly as he left it when he left for college. The same posters are stuck to the walls, faded now, and the same books are stacked in the shelves. His old computer from high school even sits on the desk, huge and gray, like a fossil from another age.

It’s weird sleeping in his childhood bedroom, weird staying with his parents again. They argue constantly. Little nagging snits that seem to end in pinching and elbowing and play fighting and then hugging and gross makeouts in the middle of the kitchen. Now that Dean’s grown up, they seem to have lost all inclination to keep that shit to themselves and Dean walks in on them getting handsy with disturbing regularity.

Lawrence itself has changed, the shops are different, there are new housing estates and shopping malls popped up over old landmarks from his childhood, and the school he and Sam went to has been bulldozed to make way for office buildings.

Nothing smells like Castiel though. His mom puts fresh sheets on his bed and they smell like her flowery fabric softener, not blue-eyed omega and mate. It takes longer for Dean to get to sleep, but he doesn’t wake up reaching for a warm body that isn’t there.

He spends a few days hanging at home with his mom, helping her in the garden and with odds and ends around the house his father hasn’t gotten around too – like empting the gutters and nailing down a loose floorboard in the attic, but when his dad asks if he wants to come and help around the shop, he jumps at the chance. Fixing cars had been what had, oddly enough, first got him interested in medicine. He’d thought about studying engineering or something, but it was the fixing part he’d liked, and what was more important than fixing _people?_

With his attention fixed on the car in front of him, the smell of grease and gasoline heavy in the air and the sound of his dad’s classic rock and the occasional rattle of an air gun echoing across the workshop, he barely thinks of Castiel at all, hardly notices the dull ache in his chest. It’s good. Awesome. Not quite as shit.

His grandma Deanna comes over the first Saturday he’s home, and Dean wakes up to the sounds of her and his mom talking in the kitchen and the delicious smell of them baking. His grandma hugs him extra tight and kisses both his cheeks when he comes downstairs, her soft beta scent washing over him comfortingly, but she doesn’t actually say anything about his situation, for which Dean’s grateful.

He sits at the breakfast island and talks to them as they cook. Well, his grandma does most of the talking, but hearing about grandpa Samuel’s moaning over his bung knee and the scandalous things Dean’s douchebag cousin Christian has been getting up too is a nice distraction.

The morning passes pleasantly enough until the apple pie comes out of the oven and a thick slice is plated up for him with a generous scoop of ice-cream flecked with dark vanilla bean. It smells delicious, and his dad appears with perfect timing, as if he’s been summoned by the aroma, his hands dark with grease from where he’s been tinkering with the Impala in the back shed. He kisses Deanna on the cheek and then hugs Mary, who smacks at him and tell him to get his greasy paws off her and wash up if he’s expecting any pie.

Dean watches the exchange with a smile and forks up a mouthful of his slice. It’s sweet and warm and perfect in his mouth. His mom’s apple pie can only be beaten by his grandma’s, and this is an amalgamation of both delicious variants. The crust is buttery and flaky, the filling spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves and the apples are just tart enough to counter the sugar. It’s perfect, but it reminds him with sudden awful clarity, somehow, of Castiel. Of how his first kisses had tasted like cinnamon and apple when Dean had first pulled him into his arms, wide-eyed and beautiful in the coffee shop.

His throat feels dry. He wants to spit the mouthful of pie out and rinse the taste from his mouth. Instead he swallows with difficulty and tries to ignore the way his eyes sting. Over a piece of fucking _pie_ of all things. Every time he thinks he’s reached rock bottom he reaches all new lows in levels of humiliation. Putting down his fork he pushes the little flowery plate away. When he looks up he finds everyone staring at him. His grandma has a fork clenched in one hand and the other pressed to her mouth and his father is standing at the sink, his hands soapy and the water running ignored in front of him. As if from a distance Dean hears something and realizes he’s making that awful whining noise again, that low mournful whine he never made before he met Castiel and then lost him, and that his mother is crying.

Later on she comes upstairs and finds him lying on his bed, staring up at the tattered Metallica poster tacked up on the ceiling.

She sits on the side of the bed and picks up his hand, squeezes his fingers. “Maybe,” she says. “Maybe it would be a good idea to try something new for a while?”

Dean just looks at her.

“A fresh start even?” she suggests. “Get out of that apartment and move somewhere that doesn’t remind you of… him?”

She has a point, but Dean’s not sure he _wants_ to let go of that connection, even though it would probably be a good idea. Castiel knows two ways to contact Dean – where he works and where he lives. A tiny, _stupid_ , part of him keeps hoping he’ll just turn up on his doorstep.

“I know you like being near Sam, but you had other offers when you graduated,” she continues. “You don’t have to stay out in California. You could move back to Kansas, or somewhere completely new. It might be good for you, help you move on. Or distract you a little at least.”

Dean closes his eyes but hums in vague agreement to show he’s listening.

“It’s hard to see you hurting so much,” she says, her grip on his hand tightening for a moment. Dean can smell salt again, more tears, the bitterness of her distress lingering in the air. It just makes him feel guilty on top of everything else. He can’t stay here, that’s for sure.

“Maybe you’re right mom,” he says, mostly so she’ll feel better.


	9. Chapter 9

Castiel doesn’t realize what’s happening the first time. It’s a month after he mated with Dean and he’s been feeling so miserable he doesn’t take much notice of the slight fever and the ache in his limbs. He stops for some cold and flu at the pharmacy on campus and doesn’t think much on it at all. It’s not until he gets a sudden hot flush in a chilly lecture hall despite the pills he took with his morning coffee that he recognizes it for what it truly is.

There is a hot ache at the base of his spine and that tell-tale throb that he knows means he’ll start leaking slick soon. His cheek flame with embarrassment as he gathers his things and makes his way up the aisle and out of the rear exit of the hall. With the A/C up so high his scent is muted somewhat, but he notices sharp-eyed alphas glancing at him as he passes, turning in their chairs and scenting him curiously, and there are sympathetic winces and watery smiles from commiserating omegas as well. The betas of course, remain oblivious.

The one mercy is that he’s mated, so his heatscent isn’t all that alluring to anyone save his mate. Who of course, isn’t around to appreciate that fact. But at least no other alphas bother him or try to proposition him like they used to when he was younger and unmated. There are no crude offers of knots and hard fucks as he hurries across the campus, just a few lingering looks.

Castiel makes it home and has a cold shower, ignoring his chattering teeth and the needling thought in the back of his head that he _knows_ where his mate is, that if he was to go to him, there is no way Dean would be able to turn him away in the midst of a heat. It’d be just like the last time he’d seen him, Dean would fuck him and knot him and slake the heat building in his veins.

With a sob Castiel gives up on trying to restrain himself and flicks the water to hot then wraps a hand around his throbbing dick. Through the rapidly fogging glass he can see himself in the mirror, and his eyes catch of the fading scar on the side of his neck, Dean’s claim bitten into his skin. He shudders at the pulse of intense want that passes through him as he remembers the feel of Dean’s mouth there, of his alpha sinking his sharp teeth into him, claiming him even as his knot split him open. He braces himself against the glass of the stall and yanks at his dick viciously. He comes almost immediately, spurts of his come washing away down the drain and leaving him lucid for a little while. It will be back though, he hasn’t been through a heat since he was a teenager, since he was too young for suppressants, but he remembers them well enough.  

Jerking off won’t take the edge off for long.

Leaning against the cool glass he closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath, tries to calm himself. When his heart has stopped racing he shuts off the water and towels off, not bothering to dress. He doesn’t have a false knot anymore, he threw the thing away the day he took his first suppressant, but he has a few things in the drawer of his bedside table. A slim vibrator, some lubricant, a plug.

Not even trying to hold out - he knows it’s useless – he pulls out the vibrator, bends over the bed, and fucks himself to a vicious, hollow, orgasm, purposely not thinking of Dean, not thinking of anything, just sating the physical need. It is more calming than jerking off had been even though his ass clamps down, clenches around the slender plastic, desperate for a knot.

The plug slides in easily. It’s not big enough, doesn’t stretch him like his alpha’s knot would, but it’s better than nothing and he’s able to dress and function almost normally for a couple of hours before he has to repeat the process. He emails his supervisor and informs him of his impending absence, then makes some arrangements with a few classmates that have better note taking habits than Meg from the tutorials and lecturers he will miss, although most of them will be available online.

Since he’s not yet mad with lust, he prepares a meal. Pasta and a dark sauce rich with garlic and wine. One of Balthazar’s favorites.

He arrives after seven, and beta or not, he can scent Castiel’s heat immediately. It’s strong. The heavy scent of a mated, fertile omega calling to its mate. The showers Castiel has taken, the deodorant he has sprayed all over himself - even the tempting smell of their dinner - do little to mask it. Balthazar’s lips narrow into a thin bloodless line. “Do you need anything?” he asks.

Castiel shakes his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well… if you need me to buy you… anything… just let me know.”

“I’ll be _fine,”_ Cas repeats. Emphatic.

He eats with Balthazar, but his beta scent is grating, makes him feel nauseous, and the pasta, even though he knows he usually enjoys it, tastes disgusting and feels strange in his mouth. As soon as he has rinsed their dishes and stacked the dishwasher, he bides Balthazar goodnight and retreats to his bedroom.

The second and third day of his heat are awful. The vibrator does little to ease the ache, the need, no matter how hard Castiel fucks himself with it. He ends up shoving his fingers in beside it, desperate for anything, for _more._ He wants his alpha, wants _Dean_ so much it he feels sick with it. In the delirium of his heat he moans his name, begs for him, fantasizes about him appearing in his room to pin him down and fuck him viciously.

When he has moments of lucidity he cries, disgusted with himself, by how his body is betraying him. How wet and needy he is for a virtual stranger, mate or not.

When he finally emerges from his room Balthazar looks at him oddly. It’s early, not yet 7 in the morning and his husband is sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen with a coffee, a plate of toast and tablet. He like to go over his emails with his breakfast. It makes him seem more productive if he shoots out a few before office hours.

Castiel hovers near the fridge, then crosses to the cupboard to pull out a mug to get himself coffee. He’s freshly showered and there is no trace of his heat left upon him, but his ass is tender and he feels like there is a neon sign above his head telling Balthazar every filthy thought he had over the last few days, every fantasy and memory of Dean he’d indulged in. “I’m sorry,” he says, though he’s not sure what he’s apologizing for exactly. The fact that his husband probably heard him calling another man’s name mostly. For being an omega perhaps. For getting himself in this situation.

Balthazar puts his tablet down and gives him his full attention. “It’s not your fault Castiel,” he tells him, but his voice is a little tense and Castiel knows he is upset. He only ever uses his full name when he’s upset. “And nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, you didn’t ask for this. You can’t control your biology.”

It sounds like he’s saying it as much to remind himself as to be supportive, but Castiel nods anyway. “It’ll fade,” he says. “The… the _mating bond_ -” He trips over the hateful words. “-will break and my suppressants will start working again.”

Balthazar smiles, but it is patently false. “Of course,” he agrees. “We’ll put this ugly little episode behind us.”

Castiel nods again, even though he’s thinking of how the scent-mating had lingered. He has an awful feeling the full mating bond will take a long time to break, that perhaps it _won’t_. But he never told Balthazar that the scent-bond didn’t break and that it had been the same alpha… that he had, technically, known Dean before they mated… And. Well. Courting and mating someone is very different to the flings and one night stands Balthazar indulges in. It undermines the validity of their marriage. Dean could, if he wanted, challenge it. Claim mating rights over a legal union. He might win too. Oh no one would _force_ Castiel to live with him as his mate, but his marriage to Balthazar could be deemed invalid if he can be proved to be mated to someone else.

His husband would lose his inheritance. Five years or an heir, those were the stipulations to his father’s will. Balthazar had to marry and produce an heir or remain wed and living with his spouse for five years before the estate was released to him in full and in perpetuity.

Remembering that fact, how he could ruin his friend’s life, helps Castiel remain strong when the mating bond flares up hot and painful. When he finds himself crying late at night for someone he has no reason to miss. When pining sickness has him weak and thick-headed, sobbing and fragile over the most ridiculous of things.

He buries himself in his research and his studies. Stays up late reading through texts until he is so tired his eyes drift shut the moment his head hits the pillow. He still dreams of Dean though, wakes up to find himself wet and clenching around nothing, his dick a hard line against his belly. There is nothing he can do to stop that.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean returns to his empty apartment, to his abandoned nest. The time he was away has left him slightly more clear-headed than before, but he knows the withering mating bond is still fucking with him. Pining sickness. It could last months, years. Might never fade entirely.

Castiel’s scent is gone. No trace of him remains lingering anymore, not even in the pillows he’d been curled up with for days on end as they mated. It’s a good thing, Dean knows, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. He can’t lay in bed and pretend anymore. When he’s feeling particularly low, when the hollow space under his ribs seems to be threatening to swallow him whole, there is no soft hint of _mate_ to help lull him into daydreams where Castiel stayed.

The coffee shop downstairs is ruined for him too. He goes in there once, a few weeks after the incident, orders a coffee and sits down in his usual spot. The big comfy chair in one corner, the one he’d been sitting in when Castiel had stumbled upon him like a bolt from the blue. Like an act of God. Not only does the place now dredge up just as many memories as his apartment, he realizes that his favorite chair is different. He sits there drinking his coffee, forcing himself to try and enjoy it, and he’s half way through when he puts two and two together. Castiel had been headed specifically for the chair Dean’s sitting in.  The chair which no longer feels like the most comfortable thing on the planet, no longer eases his aches and exhaustion after a long shift.

Dean knows Castiel won’t have returned to the coffee shop, it would be insane to when Dean lives up above, and so it’s not hard to puzzle out. It had been _Castiel_ that made this seat Dean’s favorite. It had held a lingering trace of his scent mixed in with the soft blur of all the other people who sat in it. One of the few things Dean knows about Castiel is that he’s a graduate student at Stanford, that he was a year ahead of Sam in his studies. He’d said this was his favorite coffee shop, he’d probably been coming her longer than Dean had lived in the building.

Dean’s coffee tastes awful. He leaves it half-full on the table.

The next day he goes to the starbucks across the road, even though it’s overpriced and the baristas are way too chirpy for his tastes.

He finds himself thinking about what his mother suggested, about moving, finding a new position and making a new start for himself. She’s right, he’s only in California for Sam, and with his hours and Sam’s studies he rarely sees him more than once a week now anyway. It had been different when Sam had been living with him when he was Pre-law, but now that he’s got the apartment with Jess, Dean’s more of a peripheral support in his life instead of a mainstay. Which is cool - Dean’s glad his brother’s got a mate and that she’s awesome. He likes knowing Sammy’s got someone watching out for him, that he’s happy.

But his mom is right, Sam doesn’t need him so close anymore.

He’s grown up. Sure, he probably likes having Dean nearby, likes being able to stop by unannounced for pizza, beer and xbox, but it’s not like he’d be upset if Dean wanted to move on. Hell, who knows where he and Jess will end up once they’ve finished school. Jess’s family aren’t from California either. They could end up on the other side of the country.

Dean looks around online, scopes out a few places he’d been interested back before he moved out to California. He emails some of his old classmates and friends, puts a few feelers out, gets their opinions on where they’re working and if there are any positions that would suit Dean. There are a few maybes that sound interesting. None are straight promotions, more like moving sideways, but career-wise there are a few pretty intriguing opportunities out there. Henriksen, one of guys he’d done his residency under, seems especially eager to get Dean working under him again. He’s moved up in the world in the last couple of years, ended up a department head at a nice private place in DC. It sounds awesome. Dean can’t say he’s not tempted, regardless of the mess he’s trying to get away from in his private life.

Despite his interest, he doesn’t apply for anything though. He does spend a good while googling things, the hospitals and surgeries themselves, the real estate around them, the commute to Lawrence and Palo Alto. DC is on the opposite of the country to Sam and Jess, but only 5 hours on a plane. And it’s about the same distance from his folks in Kansas. It’s doable, if he’s willing to accept how often he’ll probably end up quietly hyperventilating to Metallica on planes.

He lets the idea marinade in the back of his head.

He _could_ leave.

And he needs to do _something._

At work things run a little better. There’s less whispering and sad looks pointed in his direction. Jo and Dr Barnes are still obviously worried, as are a few of the guys Dean’s gotten close to, but for the most part everyone seems to have bored of the drama of his screwed up mating and the grape vine has moved onto to juicier gossip. Like how Bradbury up in Cardiology managed to get herself mated to some rich omega she met online. When Dean congratulates her she grins the widest he’s ever seen her and gives off enough happy-alpha-vibes to get everyone in the ward mildly scent-doped.

The pictures she has on her phone show a beautiful woman with golden brown curls. Her name is Glinda. Bradbury’s a good doctor and something like a friend - their paths don’t cross much but Dean’s always gotten along with her - so Dean tries to smile and be happy for her, even though seeing someone so _happy_ about a mating makes his insides curdle.

Which is how he ends up in a loud bar, celebrating with Bradbury and Glinda’s friends and pretty much everyone not on shift from work. The place is packed, the drinks are mixed and expensive and the music is terrible. Bradbury, already pink-cheeked and hiccupping by the time he arrives, gives him a crushing hug and introduces him proudly to her mate. They make a nauseatingly attractive couple and appear hopelessly infatuated with each other. Dean congratulates them and then manages to slip away to a quiet corner with a beer. They only have weird overpriced stuff he’s never heard of. Dean, who grew up sneaking his dad’s from the fridge in the garage, has always preferred the simpler stuff. The organic wheat micro-brew the bartender recommends is definitely not his style. He drinks it anyway, too fast on an empty stomach probably.

He talks to Jo for a while, and then Pam and Ash, but everyone else is drunk and happy and laughing and even though he’s working on the drunk part, all Dean’s thinking about is the empty apartment waiting for him. Everywhere he looks he seems to see mated couples. Dancing, flirting at the bar, huddled around low tables and lounges… His shitty mood and the terrible beer is probably why he lets Dr Barnes, (“It’s _Pam_ Winchester, we’re not at work!”), goad him into a drinking game at the bar. 7 shots of tequila are never a good idea, especially given the mood Dean’s been in lately.

Which is how he ends up in a back room with his tongue shoved down some random guy’s throat. He’s slim with dark hair, and that’s really all Dean cares about. He’s an omega too, but Dean can’t really smell him over the confusing jumble of scents hanging in a thick cloud over the drunk, horny, crowd. Which is good because it means Dean can ignore how _wrong_ the guy smells, and in return the guy can pretend that Dean doesn’t smell mated. They kiss and all Dean can taste is tequila. He feels the vibration of little moans coming from the guy’s throat as he nips and licks along the line of his jaw and down his neck, but he can’t hear them over the throb of the awful music. In his head he hears Cas’s little moans and whimpers. That low voice of his pleading and begging.

So the guy he’s grinding up against is more or less irrelevant. All he really cares about is that he has something warm and willing and vaguely mate-shaped in his arms. His dick throbs insistently and he wants nothing more than to press the faceless omega against the wall and get his knot in him. It’s dark in the back room they’re in, standing room only and plenty of people groping and kiss each other. Dean’s not sure but he thinks someone’s giving a beta a blow job off in the corner. He thinks nothing of shoving his hands down the omega’s jeans, squeezing his ass and feeling him up. He’s not wearing underwear and between his cheeks he’s hot and wet.

Dean moans, grinding his dick into the omega’s stomach and slides a fingertip over his fluttering hole. The omega arches into the touch and slick bubbles out past his rim. Thinking on Cas, on how fucking _perfect_ he’d tasted, Dean leans back a little and shoves a dripping finger in his mouth. Sweetness explodes over his tastebuds and for an instant it’s amazing, has the base of his dick tingling and thickening in preparation to knot, but then suddenly it’s awful, bitter. Like saccharine. He actually gags a little. Wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. It seems to cling to his skin, his mouth, a smeared taint.

The guy he’s got pinned to the wall frowns, clearly offended and suddenly he’s not faceless anymore, not some analogous Castiel substitute. He’s cute. Dark hair and dark eyes. A few years younger than Dean. But he’s glaring, he’s _not_ Castiel and there’s bile in the back of Dean’s throat. He steps back abruptly, needing to get some space between them. “Hey!” the guy huffs, obviously pissed now.

Dean just shakes his head, mumbles _sorry_ into the air between them, and then turns and more or less runs from the bar. The heady perfume of so many people in one place isn’t a blurring comfort anymore, it’s a thick fog choking him. When he makes it outside the cool night air, the smell of everything and nothing, has his head spinning in relief. He spits, retches into the gutter. The taste of sour bile is preferable to a stranger’s slick.

He walks home, his head fuzzed with tequila.

Guilt sits heavy in his stomach. He feels like he’s betrayed Castiel, even though mated or not, they’re nothing to each other. Dean showers to wash the smell of other people off his skin. The taste of the omega lingers in the back of this throat, sharp and wrong. He brushes his teeth and gargles with so much mouthwash his entire mouth goes numb.

When he stumbles into his bed he can’t help wonder if Castiel has suffered the same aversion since their mating. If the touch of anyone that isn’t Dean repulses him. There’s no way of knowing. Mating bonds aren’t always equal. Castiel hadn’t wanted Dean enough to stay, so maybe the hold the bond has on him is much less tenacious than the awful thing that’s slowly choking the life out of Dean. Maybe he’s got no problem at all touching other people. He’s married. Maybe he’s in bed with his husband right now. Maybe they fuck like bunnies all day long. Lord knows if _Dean_ had Castiel wearing his ring he’d spend as long as humanly possible tangled up with him, buried inside him, drawing those little gasps and whimpers out of him.

 _And besides,_ he thinks miserably. _It’s been almost two months_.

Castiel _has_ to have suffered a mating heat at least once by now. Beta or not, his husband will have fucked him through that, maybe even gotten him pregnant. It’s harder for a beta to impregnate an omega, but in a heat those odds increase exponentially. Maybe they’re treating his mating to Dean as some fucked up fertility treatment.

Dean passes out fairly early and has the vivid dreams of the extremely drunk. In his head Castiel is in his arms, his belly soft where Dean’s left a piece of himself inside, and he’s safe and he’s warm and he’s home.


	11. Chapter 11

He’s prepared for it the second time, and he notices the symptoms as the heat flares again. A little over two months have passed since the mating and he has had time to come to terms with it a somewhat, with the long term effects it will have over his life. The morning he first feels it coming on, he goes shopping to prepare. He buys a false knot, a hideous pink silicon thing that a beta who winks a lot sells to him at a nondescript sex shop. Then he stops and picks up the groceries they’ll need over the next few days, since Balthazar is terrible at keeping track of things like milk and bread and coffee.

He buys some of his husband’s favorite snacks too, perhaps out of some desperate attempt to make up for the fact that he’ll be spending the next few days knotting himself on a lump of plastic and pretending it’s Dean’s dick.

The omega at the checkout flares her nostrils and gives him an embarrassed little smile as he pays and Castiel notices the clammy sweat across his brow and down his back. He estimates he has only a few hours left before his heat hits him in full. The breeze on the walk home is cool and refreshing, but Castiel hurries. He doesn’t want to be caught outside when he starts to get wet. The very idea is mortifying.

He drinks a large glass of cool water when he makes it back to the house, then two more since he knows he’ll need to keep hydrated to keep up with the sweat and slick his body will produce over the next few days. His thoughts are just starting to fuzz, the dull ache in his joints turning inwards. Rallying himself, he starts putting away the shopping. Balthazar’s preferred coffee grounds and tea, the cookies he likes to eat when he watches tv after dinner, the brie and the stuffed olives he likes on crackers with a glass of wine when he gets home from work. He’s just putting a fresh box of dishwashing tablets under the sink when he hears the front door slam. In horror he realizes he mustn’t have pulled it shut after him.

Instantly he tenses, on high alert. Glancing around the kitchen he grabs a knife from the wooden block and grips it tightly. He doesn’t call out and give himself away, just stands still and listens to the footsteps down the hall. A shadow stretches across the floor past the doorway to the kitchen as the intruder approaches.

Castiel hates the great surge of relief that overwhelms him when Dean is suddenly there, mere feet from him, framed by the doorway.

He’s panting, short little huffs, tasting the air on his tongue, and Castiel feels his heat bloom and unravel inside him, leave him wet and aching, at the realization that he has tracked him here, that he has followed Castiel’s scent.

“Dean,” he says and the knife clatters to the floor.

The noise of it breaks the tension in the room and then suddenly Dean is upon him, his hands greedily grabbing at Castiel’s hips, his nose shoved under his ear, scenting him even as he nips and bites at the fragile skin of his neck. The smell of him, thick alpha musk, has Castiel whining and baring is throat. Dean’s teeth scrape, gnaw, mark and Castiel pulls at him, twists his fingers into his clothes and tries to get him closer.

“ _Mate,”_ Dean whines into his skin and Castiel feels his body sing out in joyous acceptance of the claim.

The cloying stink of his heat is thick between them, roiling off his fevered skin, and he feels the first slick slide between his thighs as he opens up. Opens up for “ _Dean_ ,” he moans.

Dean licks a stripe up his neck and then his mouth is on Castiel’s, hard and demanding, kissing him deep and frantic. The countertop is a hard line in the small of his back and it seems completely natural for Castiel to reach back, get a hand on the cool stone and pull himself up onto it. Dean hums in approval, nudging him back and pushing in-between his legs immediately.

Castiel can feel the bulge of his cock pressed in tight against him and he reaches between them blindly, fumbling for his fly as Dean ruts against him and more or less fucks his mouth. He gets his fingers wrapped around the thick, hot shape of him, gets his fingers wet and sticky with leaking precome, and then Dean’s shoving him down against the counter and tearing at his jeans. Castiel wriggles and lifts his hips to expedite the process and within moments his jeans and underwear are dangling from his left ankle and Dean’s hands are digging into his thighs, lifting him. Castiel doesn’t need further instruction, he wraps his legs around Dean and uses them to crowd him in closer.

He feels the blunt shape of Dean’s cock slide against him, feels how wet he is for his mate as he covers him in his slick, and then the fat head of him is pressing into his hole, splitting him open and filling him up. Two months of pent up frustration, of pointless longing and denied want swell up inside Castiel as he _finally_ gets what he’s been craving. He shivers as heat races over his skin, radiating out from the sweet agony of his mate sliding into him and plugging up that hungry space inside him. He’s thick, perfect, hits every sweet spot as he presses in and Castiel arches his back, mouth open and gasping because he can’t get a sound out. Dean snarls, a victorious sound and Castiel cants his hips, surrenders to him utterly, tries to get him deeper.

And then their hips are flush and Castiel is filled entirely with Dean. He draws a shuddering breath, overwhelmed at the sensation, his body clenching and quivering around Dean where he’s locked inside. Dean looms over him, panting, alpha-red eyes boring into him. His fingers dig into Castiel’s thighs and then he gives a sharp little thrust, not pulling out, just rutting into Castiel and waking up all those achy places inside. It’s too much, too intense after so long pining for his mate and Castiel feels his body jerk and twist spastically as he spills wet and hot against his stomach.

Dean smears the mess across Castiel’s skin and then there are two thick finger wet with come pressing into his mouth. Castiel takes them in without a thought, licks and sucks the taste of his own orgasm off Dean’s fingers. His heat abates a little, slaked by his orgasm and the thick cock spearing him open and Castiel is dimly aware that he should _not_ be doing this – but then Dean strokes his spit-wet fingers across his lips and draws out to start fucking him in earnest.

It’s brutal and lacking any sort of finesse, just Dean pounding into his wet clinging body, making Castiel slide against the counter, the stone hard and painful against his tailbone and the back of his head, but he barely feels it. Every nerve in his body seems to be focused entirely on the hot aching stretch of his mate fucking in and out of him, on the wet slide of their bodies as they cleave to one another desperately. The slap of their skin and the wet squelch of Castiel’s body is obscene. It feels incredible though, has wanton, _needy_ , little noises bubbling out of Castiel’s throat.

He’s already come but his dick is still hard and he’s anything but satisfied. Dean is fucking him as hard as he can but he still fills hollow. He needs more, needs his knot. Needs to feel his alpha stretch him wide and paint his insides with his seed. “Alpha, alpha need it,” he moans, half-delirious. “Please Dean you feel so good, need you.”

“Cas,” Dean grunts, hips jerking even faster, slamming into Cas at a fevered pace. “Fucking _mine.”_

There is no thought of denying it. “Yes,” Cas agrees, crossing his legs behind Dean’s heaving back, drawing him in closer. The thickening base of his cock begins to stretch him on each thrust and Castiel feels his heat flare up white hot and impossible. So close, so close to getting what he needs.

Dean falls forward, bracing himself over Castiel as he starts to rut. His red eyes catch Castiel’s and he can’t look away. _“Mate,”_ he hisses, hips jerking wilding as his knot begins to swell in earnest.

Castiel clutches at him, grinds his hips up trying to get him deeper. _“Dean! Alpha! Knot me!”_ he wails.

“ _Mate_ you,” Dean corrects, slamming his hips deep and snarling in pleasure as his knot catches and Castiel is caught, tied to him. Everything goes white and silent for a moment as Castiel keens on Dean’s knot and comes in spurts between them and then Dean’s teeth are buried in his neck and he’s empting himself deep, filling him up with his seed.

Castiel’s not sure how long it takes for the fog of their mating to clear, but when it does he’s no longer stretched out on the counter, instead they are on the floor, and he is in Dean’s lap. His head is tucked against his shoulder and Dean is holding him tightly, both arms wrapped around him completely. Between his legs his body pulses hotly around the thick knot buried in him.

A wonderful ache.

It is difficult to keep his eyes open. He wants nothing more than to sleep here, in his mate’s arms, caught on his knot. Dean is purring, a loud sated rumble that vibrates against Castiel’s chest where they are pressed tightly together. He smiles as he realizes his own softer tone is humming out of his chest out in reply. He nuzzles into the warm skin of Dean’s neck, scenting the bright, happy smell of him.

 _Dean, mate, safe,_ his nose tells him and he sighs happily.

Dean turns towards him and nuzzles against him in return, scent marking him. “Cas,” he says, voice gone soft. His eyes are green again and his cheeks flushed. He looks very beautiful so Castiel kisses him. Dean mumbles happily into his mouth and for a time they just sit there, sharing soft languid kisses. Castiel’s head is fuzzy in the best way. He feels utterly boneless and completely relaxed. It is not until Dean starts to speak that the lazy euphoria starts to fade.

“Missed you,” he says. “Missed you _so much_.” And he sounds so _sad_ that Castiel is instantly guilty and his post-mating buzz starts to unravel.

Dean butts his face against his gently. “Can’t believe I found you again.”

Castiel swallows as he remembers where they are. How it is he came to be tied to Dean in the middle of his husband’s _kitchen_.

“What are the chances?” Dean mumbles into the crock of Castiel’s neck. “Of finding you again?” He sounds amazed, awed. “I was just… walking and suddenly I smelled you, knew you needed me.”

“My heat.”

“Yeah baby, your heat,” Dean agrees, pressing soft kisses to the fresh mark he’s left bitten into Castiel’s skin. “Knew I had to find you.”

The casual endearment, the ‘baby’ is what finally pulls Castiel back to his wits. “Dean, this shouldn’t have happened.”

Dean goes completely still, then raises his head to stare at Castiel in disbelief. “ _Shouldn’t have happened?_ ” he parrots back. “Cas, obviously this isn’t something we can keep ignoring. I mean, I understand you…” He pauses and closes his eyes for a moment, face twisting up into something savage for a moment before smoothing out again. “That you have… a husband,” The muscle in his jaw twitches and Cas can taste his anger in the back of his throat, but it’s restrained, held back. “But we need to… deal with this. I’ve let you go twice now Cas, I can’t do it again.”

“ _Let_ me go?” Castiel demands.

“I knew you were my mate the moment I saw you,” Dean tells him. “But when I found out you were married – I let you go. I didn’t try and find you, try and convince you to leave him. And then…” He swallows and looks to one side for a moment, a pained expression flitting across his face. “And then you found me. What were the odds of us meeting in that coffee shop like that?”

“Higher than you’d think, I have been frequenting that establishment since my first year,” Castiel tells him.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. “And sitting in that old wingback in the corner.”

Castiel blinks in confusion. “Yes…?”

Dean leans forwards, rests his brow against his. Castiel knows he should not allow such an intimate gesture, but his heat lingers and he can still feel Dean’s _knot inside him,_ so it seems a minor infraction in comparison. “I always sit there,” Dean tells him, and with their faces so close each word is a soft warm breath on Castiel’s skin. “I’d stop there for a coffee on my way back from a shift. Something about that place always made me feel calm and relaxed, even though the coffee is pretty shitty really.”

Castiel swallows. It’s hard to resist the urge to tilt his head a little and press his lips to Dean’s. “You’re implying that some lingering trace of my scent made that coffee shop appealing to you.”

“Not implying,” Dean says. His lips almost brush Castiel’s. “Please?” A small tilt and then he’s kissing him, softly, carefully. He raises a hand and cradles Castiel’s face like he’s precious. He presses words into Castiel’s mouth with ardent kisses. “You’re my mate,” he says. “I need you. You’re home.”

Castiel’s chest burns uncomfortably, because a part of him, a large part if he is honest, laps up Dean’s words and his soft kisses as eagerly as the heat-addled side of him had embraced the more primitive, alpha aspect of him earlier. But he knows Dean’s words and the bond between them, it doesn’t really mean anything. They don’t even know each other.

“I’m married,” he mumbles against Dean’s lips. “I made a vow before god.”

“It’s _broken_ ,” Dean tells him. “We’re mated. You’ve got my claim on your neck and my knot in side you Cas.” He rolls his hips a little on the last and Castiel gasps as he feels him, thick and hard. He wavers on a knife’s edge. It would be so easy, so very easy to succumb to Dean’s words as he has already his body. Dean kisses him again, deeper and rougher, and Castiel is too weak to refuse him. “Come home with me.”

 _“Dean,”_ Castiel sighs. “I can’t.”

“I’m your mate,” Dean tells him. “I’m your alpha and you’re my omega. I don’t care what words you said in a church, you’re mine Cas.”

“I’m not _yours,”_ Castiel spits, suddenly livid. He shoves at Dean, tries to get some space between them.

“What then?!” Dean demands. “You’re _his?!_ Some useless beta that can’t even fuck you properly?”

Castiel glares. “No!” He doesn’t belong to anyone, not to Balthazar _or_ Dean. “But I _am_ his husband!”

Dean grabs at him, pulls his hand up between them and yanks at his wedding ring. “You think this piece of tin means anything?!”

It’s never been taken off before and Dean scrapes Castiel’s knuckle as he pulls it off and tosses it aside. It bounces across the kitchen tiles with soft tinkling sounds. Castiel stares after it, shocked more than anything, but then Dean’s fingers are digging into the back of his neck and he’s forcing him to meet his gaze. The green is gone from his eyes, they’re red _. “You’re mine!”_ he snarls.

The sting of his finger and Dean’s words sparks something feral in Castiel. Drawing back his fist he plants it right in Dean’s face. The shock jars up his arm. Dean is caught off balance, stunned, and Castiel is able to scramble back and get a foot planted on his chest. The knot he’s caught on pulls painfully at him, but he bears down and viciously tears them apart. Dean howls, in pain or rage, Castiel can’t tell and doesn’t care.

He crawls backwards across the tiles until his back hits a cupboard. Dean is holding himself and staring at him wide-eyed. _“I’m not yours!”_ Castiel screams. _“I’ll never be yours!_ _I don’t want you!”_

Dean reels back, Castiel’s words seeming to hit him harder than his fist, so he repeats them. “I don’t want you! Get out! Get out! _Get out right now!”_

For a moment Dean doesn’t do anything, just sits there in the middle of the kitchen, blood trickling down his chin from the fat lip Castiel gave him. Then he stands and pulls at his clothes before he just… walks away. Footsteps echo down the hallway and then Castiel hears the door open and then shut.

He’s not sure how long he sits on the tiles, but eventually he becomes aware of pain. His finger hurts – it’s bleeding a little – and his neck stings where Dean had bitten him. His backside is a sharp throbbing ache though, every pulse of his heart beat seeming to set it aflame. It is difficult getting to his feet. He hurts and he’s unsteady, in shock perhaps.

He showers, though he doesn’t really remember it, and then he comes back downstairs to deal with the mess.

There are a few smears of blood, from his hand mostly he thinks, and semen – mostly Dean’s. The thick smell of it, alpha musk, is alluring to his heightened heat-sense, but he shoves that aside in disgust. He wipes it up with paper towels he can flush and then mops the floors and scrubs the counters down with the harshest cleaners he can find. By the time he is done the room smells of nothing but bleach, no sign at all that less than an hour earlier Castiel had been fucked over the counter.

Numbly he puts away the last of the forgotten shopping. When he comes across the opaque bag containing the false knot, his stomach lurches and he feels ill. He can’t bear the thought of using it, and even if he could, he is doubtless too sore. He picks it up though, he can’t leave it lying around for Balthazar to find.

He wavers on his feet, suddenly exhausted. Upstairs. Into his bedroom. There is no smell of bleach, sex, blood or anything at all here, just his own scent. Safe. Clean. Shoving the bag under the bed, he crawls under the covers, eyelids drooping. The pillows are soft and huddled under the covers his body slowly stops shaking.

Between his thighs he feels tender and raw though. A persistent reminder.


	12. Chapter 12

Dean doesn’t remember getting home. Doesn’t remember most of the day. It’s not until Sam is crouched beside the sofa, gently slapping at his face with his enormous paws and calling his name, the smell of his panic and fear thick in the air around him, that he’s anything even approaching aware of his surroundings.

“Sam,” he croaks. His throat feels like the sahara. He can’t remember the last time he drank anything. The throbbing headache he has implies it was some time.

“Dean!” his brother gasps in obvious relief. “What the hell happened man?! Are you okay?”

Dean grabs him and uses him to pull himself upright. “m’fine,” he mutters.

“ _Dean._ You’re a complete wreck.” It’s a generous description really. “You didn’t show for your shift and you haven’t been answering your phone. I banged on the door for ten minutes but you didn’t answer. I had to get the spare key off Mrs Moseley to get in. _What happened?”_

Dean tries to order the awful things in his head, rearrange them until they make sense. “He was in heat,” he starts. Haltingly. “Castiel, my…” He stops himself because Castiel isn’t _his_ anything, he made that _abundantly_ clear. “Can you get me some water man?”

Sam nods and disappears for a moment, returning with a glass. Dean drains it in one go. He needs a few aspirin too, but that can wait. “Is… _Castiel_ okay?” Sam asks, eyeing Dean carefully, nostrils flaring as he takes in the stale stink of sex and blood and fear clinging to Dean’s skin.

“I don’t know,” Dean says, and it pains his inner alpha to admit that, makes something howl under his skin. “He wanted me to leave so… I left.”

“What happened?”

Dean closes his eyes and lays back down on the couch with a sigh. “It was the most random thing Sammy. I was walking along, minding my own business, and then I scented him. His heat. I… I tracked him home I guess. We mated. Again.”

Sam swallows and even with his eyes closed Dean can guess what he’s about to ask so he beats him to the punchline. “The sex part was consensual,” he tells him. “He didn’t punch me until after his heat was slaked, when I told him I… yeah. It doesn’t really matter.” He doesn’t want to repeat those words, the rejection.

“You guys fought?”

“We argued, then I musta hit a nerve cause he gave me fat lip and then tore us apart even though we were still tied.”

Sam winces, face twisting up in a mix of sympathy and horror. Dean’s dick shrivels anew at the memory, still tender. He hopes Castiel didn’t hurt himself… “I mean it’d been a while. My knot was on its way down, but it still hurt like a bitch.”

“He bleed?” Sam asks, gesturing at the little smears dried stiff on Dean’s shirt. “That what that’s from?”

Dean shakes his head. “No that was me I think.” He pokes at his tender lip.

“And then you left?”

“He told me too, so I did,” Dean agrees.

The room is silent for a minute. Dean wonders vaguely what time it is. It’s dark, nighttime. Beyond that he has no idea. He feels unsteady and weird, like he’s just getting over a fever or a really bad hangover.

“So you followed him home, entered his house, mated _consensually_ ,” - the word is carefully stressed - “And then argued. He hit you and then forcibly separated you, told you to leave and you left?” Sam asks in his lawyer-voice.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, still not bothering to open his eyes.

“How did you get inside?”

“Door was open.”

“Did he ask you to leave before you mated?”

“No, he was in heat. You know how it goes. He was begging me to knot him,” Dean tells him bitterly. “It was only _after_ that he decided he didn’t want me around.” It rings in Dean’s ears all over again.

_I don’t want you! Get out!_

“I can’t stay here,” he says because he needs… to just _go._ Somewhere else, somewhere far, far away from Castiel. Somewhere he can pretend none of this is real, that it doesn’t matter and his heart isn’t breaking.

Sam takes him home to the apartment he shares with Jess. In a sign of how out of it he’s feeling, Dean lets him pack him an overnight bag and drive his car. It’s only a short ride to the apartment, but Dean falls asleep on the way, exhausted.

Jess cringes back from him in the entryway, scared by the awful stink of violence clinging to his every pore. Dean wants to claw his own skin off. “I’m gonna shower,” he tells his brother and his mate, taking the duffle Sam holds out to him and stumbling off down the hall without another word.

Everything feels slightly off still. Like he’s drunk or mildly sedated. The water pressure in Sam’s shower is terrible, but it’s warm and the shower gels and fruity shampoos neatly arranged in the rack are a welcome relief. Dean lathers up every inch of his skin and rubs and strips all traces of Castiel and omega from him. By the time he climbs out of the tub his skin is pink and he smells like norsca body wash and herbal essences. He pulls his toothbrush from the duffle and scrubs at his teeth, keeping his eyes off the mirror so he doesn’t have to look at himself. His lips stings.

Once he’s dressed in a clean shirt and his pajama pants, he pads down the hall to the spare bedroom. The smell of food wafts through the apartment but he feels no urge to investigate. Sam pokes his head in a few minutes later with an offer of dinner, but Dean waves him off. He just wants to sleep.

His pillow smells like fabric softener.

He sleeps in. When he wakes up he feels more like himself again. He checks his phone and finds missed calls and messages from Sam, his parents, Pam and Jo. Apparently Sam has arranged to have his next few shifts covered, which is good, since he was technically due to start three hours ago. Jess isn’t home, but when Dean ventures out into the apartment Sam is sitting at the kitchen table with coffee, his laptop and a few notepads and textbooks piled around. He looks up when Dean enters.

“There’s coffee in the machine,” he offers. “Pretty fresh.”

Dean grunts and makes his way over to grab a cup.

His sinuses feel blocked up and he can’t quite focus on Sam’s smell, but he knows his brother well enough to just sense his tension and nervousness on a bone-deep level. “Spit it out Sammy,” he mutters as he roots around the cupboard for a clean mug.

Sam lets out an explosive sigh. “How are you feeling?”

Dean shrugs and leans against the counter, sipping at his coffee. “Alright. Bit more like myself.”

His brother nods. “Good, that’s good. Shit Dean, you had us – you had _me_ really worried,” he says. “I’ve never seen you like that man. Jess thought we should take you to the hospital for shock or something.”

Dean just grunts vaguely.

“You need to call mom.”

Dean glares. “You told _mom?”_ he demands.

Sam purses his lips. “Of course I told her. Just like you would’ve if _I’d_ been the one reduced to a catatonic mess by some random omega.”

Hearing Castiel referred to with such casual disregard, and such venom – Sam’s dislike for him is plain – makes Dean’s anger flare up protectively, and he hates that he even cares. Before he can properly dissect all that though, Sam is suddenly standing and right up in his face, sniffing.

Dean shrugs away instinctively. “Get away. What are you doing?”

Sam grabs at his shoulders and bends down to scent him properly, more or less shoving his face against Dean’s neck. “Ew what the fuck Sam?” Dean demands as his brother gets _way_ too close for comfort.

Sam pulls back a little and stares at him. His eyes are wide. “Dean,” he says, “Dean you… You don’t have a scent.”

“What?” Dean turns his face to one side and scents himself. Then presses his nose to his shoulder and does it again. There’s a faint salty hint of sweat and the lingering smell of bodywash and washing powder, but… that’s it. No alpha. No _Dean._ That scent that bloomed under his skin when he went through puberty is just… gone.

“Shit Dean,” Sam says, sounding panicked and horrified. “You smell like a null.” He turns and picks up his phone from the table, scraping a big hand through his hair. “Fuck! Jess was right, we should’ve taken you to a doctor last night.”

In contrast to his brother, instead of panic or fear, Dean’s actually… oddly relieved. He reaches out and squeezes his brother’s arm. “S’okay Sammy,” he says. “I’m fine.”

Sam scoffs. “You are far from _fine_ Dean, don’t pull that shit with me. I saw the fucking _nest_ in your bedroom.”

Dean feels like he might be sick. The thought of someone – even his brother – seeing that humiliating secret, knowing that Dean’s been pining for Castiel like some lovesick teenager, it’s… it’s….

“This _Castiel_ has fucked you up,” Sam says. “Estrangements like this screw with people’s heads – I’ve seen the fallout in family court. You need to see a professional.”

Dean takes a deep breath and stamps down on his embarrassment and shame at his abandoned nest being uncovered. “Sam, seriously, this is a good thing,” he tells him.

Sam raises an eyebrow skeptically. “A _good thing?_ ”

“Yeah. You’re right, estranged matings fuck with people’s head,” Dean agrees. “We see all kinds of messed up shit in the pysch ward. But this,” he gestures at himself. “This is good.”

“You being a fucking _null_ is good? How is that good?”

“Because it means the mating bond is finally broken!” Dean tells him.

Sam frowns. “What?”

“The shock has my hormones and shit all out of whack, but yeah, this is a good thing. A clean break.”

His brother doesn’t look convinced. “Dean, the only time someone becomes a null is if they’ve been traumatized.”

“Yes,” Dean tells him. “It’s a symptom of shock and trauma but a lot of the time it’s only temporary. It’s actually pretty common in severed mating bonds. You just don’t hear about it as much because of the fact that it’s a short term thing.” He glances at Sam’s schoolwork on the desk. “All the nulls you’ve probably read about in your case examples or whatever are the worst case scenarios I bet. Abused kids and stuff.”

“Well…”

“Look Sam, I will talk to one of the docs at work about it okay? Get them to you know, check me over, but trust me, I’ve seen stuff like this before and I know what it is, and it’s not something you need to freak out over.”

Sam sighs and puts the phone down. Sensing victory, Dean pulls his brother into a hug, knowing the display of affection will melt the last of his reserves. Sam wraps his long arms around Dean’s shoulders and squeezes. “I’m just worried about you,” he says quietly, and then after a moment, mournfully; “You don’t smell like my brother. You don’t smell like Dean.”

That hurts, and truthfully Dean’s scared, but Sam can’t smell that on him. Couldn’t scent a lie on him if his life depended on it because Dean has no scent. He feels off-balance, in shock. But a part of him really is relieved. The heavy weight in his chest that he’s been carrying around for months is gone. That Castiel-shaped black hole has scabbed over, finally. If being a null is the price he has to pay for not feeling like he’s missing a limb, then it’s a one he’s willing to pay.

And he wasn’t lying. Chances are it’s only temporary. He and Castiel had had a weirdly strong bond given the circumstances, but they hadn’t had the time for it to really grow into something. The likelihood of the break rendering him null permanently is slim.

He’ll recover, eventually.

*

Jess and Sam’s apartment is steeped in their combined scents. Sam’s alpha and Jess’s omega perfectly balanced out in mated harmony. Even with his senses dulled, it makes Dean’s skin itch. He spends most of Sunday in the spare room just to get away from it. The thought of returning to his own apartment is even worse though. He fakes his way through a shared dinner with them when Jess gets home, then has a few beers with them in the living room while they watch a movie.

Jess keeps shooting him these sad little smiles though and Sam is basically a ball of nervous over-protective angst. The moment the credits roll Dean retreats into the spare room again. Sitting in the dark on the guest bed and listening to Sam and Jess quietly talking to each other – about him he’s sure – through the walls, Dean decides he needs to take his mom’s advice.

He can’t go home. He can’t stay here.

And he knows where Castiel lives.

And Castiel knows where he lives.

If he turns up on Dean’s doorstep in the middle of his next heat – Dean knows he won’t be able to turn him away. A clean break, that’s what he needs. Time for the wounds Castiel has left inside him to heal up. If he stays, he risks a very real chance of opening them up all over again.

It’s surprisingly easy to pull out his phone and bring up Henriksen’s contact details. It’s not too late, not even ten yet.

Victor answers on the third ring. _“Winchester my man!”_

 


	13. Chapter 13

Balthazar is home late. The noise of him stumbling upstairs, drunk from the sound of it, wakes Castiel from a too-deep sleep. His room is dark and he’s under the covers, fully dressed. The digits on the alarm beside his bed glow red in the dark. 02:34. Castiel is weary, wrung out down to his bones, so he just rolls over and lets sleep claim him once more. He’ll need all the energy he can muster for when the next wave of his heat breaks.

His alarm wakes him at seven the next morning since usually he would be headed to an 8:30 lecture. He’s slept too long and his bladder complains until he drags himself from the bed. His body aches as he pulls himself to his feet and shuffles towards the bathroom, his joints stiff with the throb of a fading heat similar to that of a flu. The tenderness of his ass is less than he expected, and when he uses the toilet he’s relieved to find that he’s dry back there. The mating with Dean has slaked this heat it seems.

One small kindness offered up amidst the ugliness of the situation.

It means he won’t need to knot himself on the lump of silicon shoved under the bed. Not until the next heat at least, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on that.

A hot shower helps loosen the stiffness in his limbs, and a few aspirin brings the lingering heat-fever under control. Castiel avoids looking in the mirror as he towels off and dresses. He can feel Dean’s latest bite throbbing with his pulse in the meat of his neck and that is bad enough without actually seeing it. The collar of his shirt doesn’t quite cover it, so he pulls on a scarf. It is avoidance – really he should leave it exposed for Balthazar to see, tell him what happened the moment he sees the renewed mark - but he can’t bring himself too.

The door to Balthazar’s bedroom is shut. Castiel gathers his up his things and heads out to the campus library. He doesn’t quite feel up to attending class, but he needs to get out and do something. Burying himself in his coursework is the easiest answer.

It’s still early as he makes his way along the streets - most of the crowd people on their way to work or classes. Many of them carry paper bags of smelling of breakfast, or cups of steaming coffee. Castiel thinks of the coffee shop under Dean’s building, of the comfy wingback chair and their delicious muffins with longing.

The latte he gets from the kiosk outside the library isn’t very good - too bitter, the grounds burned - but it’s hot at least and the beta who makes it for him smiles brightly when he hands it over.

Megs joins him for a few hours and they study together and then get lunch. It’s plain that she can tell he’s upset about something, but after months of dealing with his moods, she knows better than to ask him about it.

When Castiel gets home that afternoon after lingering as long as possible on campus, he intends to tell Balthazar what happened the day before, has planned out carefully how he will explain it as clearly as possible, but just past the front door in the small tiled foyer, sits Balthazar’s suitcase.

Castiel takes it in in confusion.

“Cassie darling?” Balthazar calls out from upstairs, in his bedroom or the master bath from the echo. “Is that you?”

“Yes!” Castiel shouts back.

“Good timing!” he replies as he comes into view on the landing, carry-on briefcase slung over one shoulder. “You left your phone in your room,” he says. “ _Again.”_

Castiel has a bad habit of forgetting his phone. He uses it more or less as an alarm clock and isn’t as attached to the thing as seems to be the norm these days. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize.”

Balthazar waves a hand as he makes his way down the stairs. “No matter, you’re here now.”

“You’re going somewhere?” Castiel asks, eyeing the luggage.

Balthazar nods. “Yes, you know the merger with that firm based out of Kuala Lumpar?”

Castiel nods, vaguely recalling talk of some sort of expansion or something.

“Well one of the principle shareholders just happens to be in the states on some other unrelated bit of business and Bela’s managed to arrange a meeting with him.”

“Oh,” Castiel says. “So you’re leaving right now?”

“I’m afraid so,” Balthazar tells him. “I need to be in New York tomorrow morning, bright-eyed and all that.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“A few days, a week at the most. There’s a few other things I’ll take care off while I’m over there.” He glances at his watch. “I’ve got to go – the car Bela sent should be here any moment - but I’ll call you when I land?” he asks, then frowns. “Actually it’ll probably be the middle of the night by then, I’ll call you in the morning?”

“Okay, I hope it goes well,” Castiel tells him, guilty at how intensely relieved he is at his departure.

Balthazar smiles at him and steps closer, gripping one of his shoulders firmly and pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. The overwhelming  _proximity_ of him, the way his scent seems to flare up and coat him like a layer of oil, has Castiel’s stomach lurching and his entire body freezes up. Luckily there’s a honk from outside, almost on cue, and Balthazar is distracted from noticing his discomfit.

“Must dash!” he says, smacking another wet kiss to Castiel’s cheek and making him flinch, and then he’s gone in a blur of overpriced matching luggage and pungent cologne.

After the door closes behind him Castiel just stands for a moment. He hears the muted sounds of Balthazar greeting Bela Talbot, one of the partners at his firm, then a car door slamming. Only once he hears the sound of the car pulling away is he able to relax.

He didn’t tell him. He doesn’t know. If he’s gone long enough – a week – the mark might have faded enough that he might  _never_ know. It’s wrong to keep such a thing from his husband, from his best friend - Castiel knows that. However false their marriage might be in some ways, it’s an agreement based upon trust and honesty. Castiel’s actions could undermine the entire arrangement, their entire lives.

Castiel wallows in guilt for the duration of Balthazar’s absence, burying himself in study in a misguided form of penance. The trip in New York ends up lasting a little over a week, and the fresh mark on Castiel’s neck is red, but healed over by then. It peaks above his collars, but it no longer looks recent. When Balthazar returns his eyes drift to it once or twice in conversation, but it’s plain he doesn’t realize that it’s darker than it should be, not the original mark, and Castiel doesn’t say anything, even though he knows he should.

A little over a month after the… incident. Castiel finds himself standing across the street from Dean’s apartment building, staring at the coffee shop beneath. He knows it’s incredibly stupid to risk running into Dean, but he really wants one of the apple muffins with the spice, has been craving them for days. And perhaps a tiny reckless part of him  _wants_ to see Dean. Ignoring all common sense, Castiel crosses the road and heads into the warm shop.

One of the baristas recognizes him and gives him a wave, saying she hasn’t seen him in a while or something equally innocuously friendly. Castiel orders a coffee and two of the muffins, his mouth watering. He scans the room carefully, but there’s no sign of Dean and he lets himself relax and tells himself he isn’t disappointed. When his order is ready he picks it up, dropping a few coins into the tip glass on the counter, and then makes his way to his favorite table in the back corner.

The chair is not so comfortable as he remembers, but Castiel perseveres. He picks up his coffee and stirs in a sachet of the dark sugar the shop stocks along with the plain white stuff and sweetners. While he waits for it to cool a little he turns his attention to his muffins. The serving girl has warmed them for him, just how he likes, and curls of steam are rising off them bringing the warm, spicy scent of cinnamon and nutmeg to his nose. He breathes deeply, savoring it, and then lifts it to take a bite.

It’s sweet and tasty, almost buttery on his tongue. But it seems a little… dry? Scrunching his nose, disappointed, Castiel puts it back down on the plate and takes a careful sip of his hot coffee. To his dismay it’s bitter, not at all the perfect, rich, brew he recalls. He glances up at the counter, but the two women behind the machines are familiar, the same baristas who have been making him excellent coffee for years.

He wiggles in the seat, the cushion hard underneath his backside. And then slowly, as if waking from a dream, Castiel takes in his refuge with fresh eyes. The chair is  _uncomfortable._ The padding is thin and old and he can feel springs digging into him. The coffee is… average. Bitter. The muffin, the thing he has been craving all week it seems, is mediocre.

 _Why do I like this place so much?_  he wonders in confusion.

Now that he thinks on it, he remembers bringing Balthazar here back in his freshman year, telling him it was the best coffee he’d ever had, but Balthazar had said it was watery. He brought Meg muffins sometimes when he stopped in before a class and she never seemed to find them particularly appealing.

There’s nothing special about the coffee shop. It’s entirely average.

The sense of warmth and comfort he has always found here is vanished utterly. Evaporated before his eyes. It’s just a little café like dozens of others in the city. Just a room full of tables and chairs that smells of old coffee and other people.

 _Dean,_ Castiel thinks. It’s like he said, it wasn’t the coffee or the muffins that kept drawing Castiel here, it was the lingering trace of his  _mate_. The hint of  _Dean_  brushed off upon the leather of what was apparently  _their_  favorite chair, or some note of his passing left hanging in the air. It’s gone now though. There is nothing of Dean here anymore.

Castiel leaves his food unfinished and walks home. The mark on his neck aches anew though it’s weeks old, and every bone in his body tells him to turn around and run to Dean’s door. It costs him to keep walking, away from his  _mate_  and towards his  _husband_ , and his eyes sting and water.

Much later, safe in his room, Castiel finds himself distracted from the paper he should be working on. He can’t stop thinking about Dean, of the effect his presence, his scent has upon him. He remembers the basics of alpha/omega matings from high school biology and sex ed. but he craves some kind of reassurance that what he’s feeling is just an irrational hormonal thing that will fade along with the mating bond.

To start with he’s worried. He starts by looking into accidental matings - scent-matings and unplanned heat-matings – but what they describe doesn’t explain the sheer  _strength_ of what he has felt for Dean, and what Dean certainly seems to have felt for him.

The initial scent-mating, that had lingered far longer than it should have according to the information Castiel finds. And the heat-mating - what Castiel experienced, the triggering of his heat by Dean - it is very different to the hypothetical scenarios he finds outlined. The longevity of it alone. Most of the sites talk of a period of hours, often only a single knotting, before the participants came to their senses. Not three days of sex and kisses and obsessive scent marking and touching.

The only similar stories Castiel can find are personal anecdotes left by people on forums, and almost all involve an accidental mating with a partner or friend, someone already close to them, a person their body had already filed away as a ‘potential’ mate. Not a virtual stranger. There seems to be  _no one_ with a story remotely like Castiel’s.

He rubs at the mark on his neck nervously as he keeps searching.

 _It was the scent-mating_  he thinks.  _That was the difference._

It is not until he moves onto the symptoms of a severed bond that he finds anything even remotely reassuring. If he and Dean had a strong bond like the information seemed to suggest, he would be feeling it. The loneliness, sleeplessness and anxiety symptomatic of an omega pining for a mate Castiel has felt, yes, but nothing stronger. There has been no change to his sense of smell, or taste, or his appetite. In a bad break - or a bereavement – the symptoms are varied and extreme. Everything from hair turning white, to becoming null or mute, or in extreme cases, spiraling ill-health in general until death. Castiel scans through the long lists symptoms and lets out a sigh of relief.

What he has felt aligns with the severance of a fledging mating bond or a courting bond.

He keeps reading, checks the most reputable sources he can find, but everything lines up. Whatever he had shared with Dean, it must have been a superficial thing, despite the longevity. Maybe it only felt so strong because Dean was the first alpha he’d ever really…. Courted. Perhaps if he’d dated he would have understood all this, recognized what he was feeling. No doubt the extreme circumstances of their first meeting – Castiel’s injury and his fear – was what had resulting in the unusually strong scent-mating.

The timeframes for a full dissolution vary wildly – days to months – but the fact that his pining sickness is only mild means it is only a matter of time.

Despite what his research uncovers, putting his trip to the café behind him is difficult for some reason. Castiel still thinks of Dean, constantly. And it’s not even the sex he keeps circling back to in his thoughts. He resorts to counting games and reciting multiplication tables in his head just so he doesn’t lie in bed every night thinking about green eyes and sleepy promises and strong arms tight around him.

Focusing every scrap of his attention and energy upon his studies doesn’t work anymore.

Finals approach and he is busy, should be far too occupied to think of such things, but he finds himself daydreaming still. Of running into Dean randomly on some street corner or about him turning up on Cas’s doorstep. Sometimes the daydreams are nice, they play out like a clichéd Hollywood romance – Dean telling him he loves him, asking him to run away with him - but other times they fight. There is a vicious sort of pleasure in those fantasies, in yelling at Dean and hurting him for the way he has managed to twist and break Castiel apart seemingly without even trying.

Because that is what has happened Castiel realizes. Despite his best efforts, despite shoving the alpha away, Dean has changed him on some fundamental, cellular level, and Castiel aches for him. Misses him. Pines for him like the lovelorn omegas in his mother’s old paperbacks. It is only a mild break, he knows that now, knows that he and Dean aren’t soul mates brought together by fate or something - just an unmated alpha and omega thrown together by unlikely chance - but it hurts just the same.

Late at night, lying alone in his bed, Cas remembers the warmth of Dean’s arms, how safe and loved he’d felt wrapped up in them and it hurts almost more than he can bear.

 

* * *

  

The move is surprisingly painless and fast. Victor had been keen to get him started as soon as possible, so after he works through his notice at the hospital, Dean takes a leisurely week driving cross country. It reminded him of the roadtrips he and Sammy had taken in their dad’s prized Impala back when they were teenagers. He even stopa at few stupid tourist traps on the way - giant paperclips and balls of twine - and sends his brother snaps for old times’ sake. But nice as it is to think about maybe taking another trip with Sam sometime, (maybe after he graduated?), Dean's glad of the time just to himself.

Time to think. Or not think.

Blasting along highways with the stereo turned up and no one to hear him singing along to old motorhead or whatever he finds it easier to get all the goddamn _angsty_ shit that's been building up and festering inside him over the last few months out. He’d been worried that maybe he was rushing into things, running away, but with California in the dust behind him and nothing but open road in front of him, he’s sure it was the right call. He should’ve listened to his mom the first time. If he had of, the last ugly mess with Castiel would never have happened.

He’d found a place online and Victor had scoped it out for him, so he’s able to basically drive into town and straight ‘home’ as it were. He swings past the real estate office and signs some paperwork, then he’s got his keys and that’s that. The apartment itself is pretty sweet. Nicer than his old one, (more expensive too, but nothing crazy, it’ll be years before all his student loans are cleared). It’s central, close enough to work that he can walk when he’s feeling like getting a bit of cardio and doesn’t want to fork out for parking.

It’s in an older building that’s been renovated fairly recently. Or maybe converted from offices or something, Dean’s not sure and he didn’t google the history of the place before he signed the lease. Because it’s old it’s got high ceilings and big tall windows, and that had been what had first caught his attention when he was looking through listings. It’s empty when he walks in for the first time, but instantly he likes it. A lot. And over the next weeks that doesn’t change. The heating is good, the water pressure is decent and his neighbors are quiet and seem reassuringly ordinary.

There’s a pretty beta in the apartment across the hall that he exchanges smiles and neighborly waves with then he runs into her, and next door is a woman named Linda and her son Kevin, who’s some kind of child prodigy and an intern at the white house even though he’s still a teenager. Dean’s never actually met the kid but he knows all about him because whenever he happens to bump into his mom in the hallway or elevator, Linda likes to tell Dean all about his latest exploits. If even half of what she says is true, Kevin might well end up President just like she says.

He hasn’t met whoever lives in the two other apartments on his floor, but they’re both quiet, or the insulation is good, because he isn’t kept up by blaring TVs or anything, which can be a real problem given the weird hours he ends up sleeping depending on his shifts.

The apartment itself is a little bigger than his old one. There’s a second bedroom that he’s going to use as a study, but for now it’s just filled with boxes. The kitchen and bathroom are new and the entire place is freshly painted and carpeted. It’s had a more or less a textbook renovation to suck in a young professional such as himself, but all in all Dean’s actually pretty thrilled with the place. He’d chosen his last apartment based on what he could afford fresh out of college and with loans hanging over his head, and the novelty of having a place that’s actually pretty… nice is unexpectedly awesome.

He takes pictures of the stone countertops and fancy chrome appliances in the kitchen and sends them to his mom. Sam gets a few shots of the view of the capitol from those tall windows in the living room. They both agree that he’s got a good deal and his mom immediately nominates him to host all foreseeable family gatherings since he’s now the owner of such an impressive kitchen. Dean’s pretty sure that’s just her way of getting her foot in the door to come out and visit him, but he goes along with it, telling her she’ll have to christen it with some of her amazing cooking.

He’d sold most of his stuff back in Cali rather than shift it across the county, but he’d brought whatever he could fit in the car – clothes for the most part – and had a few other boxes couriered over.  Most of them are still sitting in the second bedroom waiting to be unpacked, but the essentials are all out. The apartment is still pretty empty, but he’d brought himself the basics – couch, dining table, tv, _bed_ all in one go when he first arrived.

So everything is new. There are no scents at all in the place, not even his own since Dean is still null. It lends a sort of stillness and cleanliness to the place that he’s never had before. It’s comforting in a weird way. Living in a space that doesn’t smell like _people_ makes it easier for Dean to forget about things. There’s nothing to remind him of Castiel in his neat, clean, apartment. His new mattress smells faintly of the plastic it came wrapped in, not the mate who doesn’t want him. But somewhere in the spare bedroom, in one of the boxes marked ‘bedroom’, there is a soft blue blanket and a stack of pillows and duvets that carry the stale scent of a mated alpha, even if that of the omega tied to him has long since faded.

Dean doesn’t unpack those things. There are crisp white sheets and a brand new duvet that smell of washing powder on his bed. There is only one pillow. It’s a bed. Dean’s bed.

Not a nest.

Sometimes he still wakes up, disorientated, expecting it to be one though, reaching for a mate who isn’t there, who never really existed. That moment of confusion when he wakes up and _remembers_ is the worst part. Every time it happens he feels hurt and hollowed out inside and then weak and stupid for caring so much, for mourning someone who was never his.

On those mornings he gets up and goes jogging. When he and Sam shared a place his brother would drag him out a few times a week, but it had never really been Dean’s thing. He much preferred just putting in some time at the gym to running around in circles at the park. He does it now though. The sights and sounds of the city waking up distract him from that awful clench in his guts and the endorphins and adrenaline released by the exercise are good at pulling him out of that dark slump.

His continuing shitty personal problems aside, Dean decides that he likes DC.

For a guy from Lawrence, the vibe of the place with the Capitol and so many big grand old buildings and serious people in suits is a bit strange, but that difference is exactly why he moved in the first place. Nothing in Washington reminds him of much of anything, especially not messy-haired omegas with too-blue eyes.

The new job is challenging, things are done differently and he has new procedures to learn, not to mention he has to get to know everyone. But Victor hadn’t lied, it’s a good place to work and a good team of people. And best of all, no one looks at him funny. No one save Victor and HR even know that he’s an alpha. With his null scent, everyone he works with just assumes he’s a beta, and since designation is hardly a polite topic of conversation, no one ever asks for any sort of clarification.

At first being constantly taken for a beta had made Dean’s hackles rise, but after a while to adjust, he actually finds it useful. Omegas and betas treat him differently, are much more friendly and less wary of him. Other alpha are less aggressive too, since he doesn’t ping their instinctive competitiveness.

The way being null makes dealing with patients and co-workers easier is almost enough to convince him that’s it a good thing that he’s broken. Almost. Except there are other changes that aren’t so fun.

Food tastes different. Bland or weird in his mouth, like it’s gone bad when he knows it hasn’t. His appetite is more or less gone and he has to force himself to eat. Remind himself that food is a fuel first and foremost and his body needs the energy.

The other major change he notices is that his sex drive is non-existent. He jacks off a few times a week in the shower out of habit, but they are sad, half-hearted orgasms and there’s never so much as a hint of a knot. He’s not sure he could pop one even if he tried. But even that he could ignore - it’s not like he has some mate he needs to satisfy sexually so his disinterest hardly matters - but when his mid-year rut just… _doesn’t come_ , that’s different.

That’s overwhelming proof that he’s not a real alpha anymore. That there’s something fundamentally wrong with him. He starts to think that he’ll never get over Castiel, that he’ll be some sort of neutered alpha for the rest of his life. No mate. No family of his own. Things he never realized how much he wanted until he _almost_ had them.

That first time, lost completely in a mating rut, he remembers thinking about it. Blinded by base alpha instinct all he’d wanted to do was fill his mate up, fuck him and knot him until he was full of him, bred. He’d wanted his ripe omega to catch.

The memory is humiliating.

His null status affects him in other ways as well. His sense of smell remains dulled to near beta levels. The musky stenches of other alphas he certainly doesn’t miss, but the fact that when he catches a whiff of an omega in pre-heat it makes him sneeze instead of perking his interest the way it should do is just another unpleasant reminder of Castiel. He knows better than to go out and try and pick up, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel resentment. Castiel doesn’t want him, but because of the hold he has over Dean’s body, Dean is physically incapable of finding someone who does.

That isn’t fair.


	14. Chapter 14

It’s a Thursday when Castiel finds out he’s pregnant. His heat never returned, which really should have been sign enough - his birth control is not tailored for a mated omega - but he’d been deeply entrenched in denial at the time and it wasn’t until the morning sickness came and with it the vague, indescribable _feeling_ of being pregnant, that he finally considered the obvious.

The positive on the test comes as no great surprise. It still makes him cry of course. _But_ , he thinks bitterly. _That’s understandable now what with being pregnant. I’m supposed to be irrational and emotional._

He’s over two months by that stage and now that he knows to look for it, he can smell the change in his scent. It is _Dean_ sunk into his very skin. He no longer just smells mated, a fact that he has been ignoring, waiting to fade, he smells like a different person entirely. Or maybe it’s that he smells like there’s a different person _in_ him? He’s not sure how it works exactly.

After taking the test he spends the day crying and showering and curled up on his bed, back and forth, in some sort of depressed emotional cycle of denial, but really he’s surprised at how quickly he comes to terms with the frankly terrifying development.

By the time the sun’s set he’s made up his mind. He can’t stay with Balthazar. It’s impossible. A child is completely beyond the terms of their agreement, and not something Castiel can share with him, even if Balthazar wanted him to. That night he puts on a mask and acts normally around him though. Later, after dinner, he calls his sister.

He explains his situation to Anna in the simplest terms possible. That he is pregnant, that it is not Balthazar’s and that he needs a place to stay because he cannot remain under his roof. Mercifully she doesn’t question him, just comforts him and tells him he’s welcome to stay with her for as long as he wants. She makes no mention of their family or his mother, and he’s grateful for that kindness too.

Lord knows what the Milton matriarch will make of it when she finds out. She’ll be no help, of that Castiel is certain. She’ll either insist he come home, or end the pregnancy, or maybe just disown him. A bastard born of adultery – Castiel can think of no surer way to horrify his mother.

Looking into deferring his courses and into colleges near his sister that he could continue his studies at offers a welcome distraction the next day. He thinks about looking up information about pregnancy, but just typing it into the search bar - _male omega pregnancy -_ is almost enough to have him hyperventilating. Instead he goes out and does some grocery shopping so that he can cook Balthazar’s favorite meal for dinner. He even goes so far as to make the chocolate sponge he’s fond for dessert.

The effort does not go unnoticed. Balthazar, who has been working increasingly late hours as he closes in on that lucrative merger, more or less crows with delight when he steps inside and smells the food. Castiel gets a kiss to the cheek and brief hug as he breezes into the kitchen. As always since Dean, Balthazar’s touch sets Castiel’s teeth on edge, but he has grown adept at ignoring it. There’s something else that has him shifting uncomfortably though - a flowery scent clinging to his husband. Perfume perhaps?

“Cassie!” Balthazar exclaims looking towards the stovetop where the pasta sauce is bubbling and inhaling deeply. “I’m _starving_ and that smells _divine!_ ”

“There’s cake as well,” Castiel tells him and gets another awkward kiss for his trouble.

They eat at the table and Balthazar talks excitedly about how his work on the merger is progressing. “I tell you, I’m glad Talbot’s on our side,” he says. “Utterly _ruthless_ that woman.” He sounds impressed and almost wistful.

Castiel tries to stay attentive to the conversation, but he’s distracted, his stomach in knots. He clears barely half his serve of pasta and just nibbles at his slice of cake even though it’s still warm from the oven and definitely one of his better attempts at baking. Balthazar moans rapturously as he digs into his own, almost enjoying it enough for the both of them. “You should cook dessert more often Cassie,” he says. “This is delicious.” He sighs around another mouthful. “Better than my mother’s, but don’t tell her that.”

Castiel opens his mouth intending to say something about having cake every night being very unhealthy, or how Balthazar’s mother has a chef and couldn’t bake a cake to save her life, but instead what comes out is: “I’m pregnant.”

Balthazar freezes, spoon laden with dark chocolate sponge halfway to his mouth. “What?”

Taking a deep breath Castiel repeats himself. “I’m pregnant. We need to divorce.”

Balthazar just blinks, face gone slack with shock. His spoon falls back to his bowl with a clatter, cake forgotten. For a few moments his mouth works like he can’t quite get sounds and words out. “ _Pregnant_?” he gasps. “When? _How?!”_ His eyes dart to the mark on Castiel’s neck and his face flushes red and his voice goes tight and suspicious. “Was it _him?_ ”

“Who it was is irrelevant,” Castiel tells him. “Clearly our arrangement is no longer satisfactory or appropriate given the situation, so I would like to dissolve it. Amicably.”

“Are you going to marry him?” Balthazar demands.

“No,” Castiel says with a frown, not liking his tone. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but for the moment I’m going to go stay with Anna and see about completing my studies at a different college. Part time if I have to. Although I only have one semester left, if I work hard I might be able to complete it before I’m due.” He’s babbling so he forces himself to stop and let Balthazar speak.

“And then what?” he asks, sounding more confused than angry. “You’re going to raise it by yourself?”

“Yes.”

Balthazar’s voice loses the last traces of hostility, becomes almost pleading. “Cassie, you don’t have to do that. I know… I know you never wanted a real marriage, but, we could do it. We’re good together. If you want to keep it, you don’t have to leave. Any child of yours – I’d love it as my own.”

Castiel stares in shock. He’d anticipated annoyance, hurt, betrayal – not…. this.  “You want me to stay? You want to raise it together?” he asks dubiously.

Balthazar stands and walks around the table to crouch down at Castiel’s feet. “That’s exactly what I want,” he says. “A part of me has always wanted that, for our marriage to be more than just a bit of paper.”

“Oh,” says Castiel, frowning, his entire perception of his best friend twisting in an instant. “You never told me that?”

“Because I cared more about our friendship than trying for something more,” Balthazar tells him. “But this – this could be a new start for us.” He must see something dubious on Castiel’s face because he adds: “And I mean it. Say the word, say you want a real marriage, and I’ll be a real husband to you Cassie.” He leans closer, presses a hand low against his stomach. The touch makes Castiel’s skin crawl. It feels horribly _wrong_. “A real father to your – _our -_ child.”

Saliva pools in Castiel’s mouth and he thinks he might be sick. His heart is racing and he wants nothing more than to stand and run, but instead he forces himself into stillness. Balthazar’s offer – a tiny part of him is saying that it would be smart to accept it. Give the child growing in his belly two parents, like it deserves, but – but it is _Dean_ who is sunk into his skin, not _Balthazar,_ and he knows suddenly that he can never be a husband to him. That their marriage, for all his naïve protestations about god and vows, is just what Balthazar had called it – a bit of paper. It’s just words he said in a church and a ring on his finger.

It’s _nothing_.

What he’d shared with Dean, that bone-deep connection, yes it was irrational and frightening – but it was _real_. Dean has been a husband – _mate –_ to him in ways Balthazar never has or ever could be. “You can’t,” he says. “You can’t be a father to someone else’s child.”

“I don’t care that it’s not mine Cassie,” he says, not understanding at all. “It’s enough that it’s _yours._ And just think, with a child my inheritance will be mine in full, assured. I can look after you both, nothing left hanging over our heads.”

“But it’s not your child,” Castiel says. “If we say it’s yours to satisfy your father’s will, that will be _fraud.”_

“No one would ever find out!” Balthazar says. “And If I’m willing to treat it as my child, make it my heir, love it as a father, what does that even matter? Think of… _him…_ as a sperm donor.”

Castiel stares at him in shock, unable to believe what he is so casually suggesting.

“And we can have other children,” Balthazar continues. “And you and I will know that my father’s stipulations were met so there will be no need for you to feel guilty over it.”

“More children?” Castiel asks dumbly.

“Of course! As many as you like! With the inheritance secured - you’ll want for nothing I swear.”

A vision unfurls before Castiel. In it he is Balthazar’s husband in full and they have a house full of children. First Dean’s child and then a string of tow-headed boys and girls gotten upon Castiel by Balthazar. Castiel sees himself cooking for them while Balthazar works late and comes home smelling of perfume. Finishing his masters, perhaps getting his doctorate, but then never using it beyond introductions at parties. Perhaps writing a _book_ in his spare time, or devoting his time and energy to charities. The life Balthazar is sketching out, the life he has apparently always wanted, is everything Castiel married him to escape from. The genteel imprisonment of an omega of good breeding. A rich husband to look after him and house full of children.

He could be describing Castiel’s parent’s marriage. Or the marriage he used Balthazar to avoid.

And on top of all that, he gives no thought at all to Dean. To the man whose child he speaks so flippantly of claiming as his own. Castiel knows barely anything about his mate, but he _knows_ Dean would never suggest hiding Balthazar’s child from him if their situations where reversed. He has already proven as much in that he has denied his instincts and rights as an alpha and let Balthazar have Castiel, his _mate,_ simply because that is what Castiel told him he wanted.

Castiel feels justified in keeping _himself_ from Dean, it’s his choice who he mates with, who he shares his life and his bed with, but he doesn’t feel that same ownership over his child, because it’s _theirs._ At the very least, Dean deserves to know of its existence.

“No,” he says, and pushes Balthazar away. The ring comes off his finger easily. He places it on the table between them. “I can’t stay. You can’t give me I want, and I can’t give you what you want.”

Balthazar looks down at the circle of gold metal in disbelief. “You’d rather raise it alone than stay with me?” he asks, sounding hurt.

Castiel thinks about shaming him for how he has spoken of, in essence, _stealing_ Dean’s child, but he does not. “I’m not in love with you,” he tells him instead, rising to his feet. “We can’t have a real marriage without that. We’d only hurt each other.”

Balthazar stands and pulls at his hands, clutches at him. “We don’t have to,” he says quickly. “Things can stay like they are.”

“No they can’t,” Castiel tells him. He wants, suddenly and terribly, to have Dean standing before him in Balthazar’s place. If he could, he would walk out the door right now and go to him. But how can he do that? Three times he’s rejected him. With indifference on the first, cowardice on the secondly, and cruelty on the third. To turn up now on his doorstep pregnant? No. He can’t do that. “I’ll let you decide the best way to dissolve our marriage,” he tells Balthazar. “Given your father’s will, I’m content with a divorce if it that’s preferable to an annulment.”

Balthazar sinks back down into one of the dining room chairs. “You’re serious,” he says with a bitter laugh. “You’re _actually_ fucking serious! Castiel ‘I don’t want children, I’ll never be some alpha’s broodmare’ Milton is going to run off chasing after some _knothead_ that doesn’t even want him!” He laughs again. “It’s like I’m in the fucking _twilight zone!”_

Absurdly, the words cut. “His name is Dean,” Castiel says. “And I’m not doing this for him. I’m doing this because it’s the best for you, me and the child. You know that.”

“Best for me?” he demands. “I’ll lose _everything!_ ”

“Marry someone else,” Castiel says, refusing to let Balthazar guilt trip him. “It’s not my fault your father was a… a spiteful, bigoted, assbutt.”

He doesn’t wait for a reply, just leaves Balthazar sitting there with Castiel’s wedding ring on the table in front of him.

*

Castiel knows it's foolish, not the way he should do this, but he can't resist. Perhaps simple honesty will help get him out of the hole he has dug for himself.

His things are packed. A few boxes sent onto Anna’s and the luggage he’s flying with packed up and waiting on his bed.

Balthazar is out, as he has been more or less for the entire week, and Cas doesn’t have to be at the airport for hours. He leaves his luggage at the door, ready for when he calls a cab, and goes for a walk. His feet lead him along the familiar route to Dean’s building. The idea of going upstairs is too much for him straight away, so he slips into the café instead.

The decaf latte isn’t that good, but it’s hot and it gives him and excuse to sit and linger for a while, putting off the inevitable. There’s still no trace of Dean in the air. Clearly he is avoiding the coffee shop as much as Castiel. He nurses the gritty dregs of his coffee for a long time and then finally forces himself to get up and make his way up to Dean’s apartment

It’s only because he’s so nervous and jittery that he notices the mail boxes in the small foyer while he waits for the lifts. Automatically his eyes scan the names for ‘Dean’ or ‘D’ on the fourth floor. He doesn’t know Dean’s surname and that seems truly awful since he is carrying his child, is his mate.

There’s an M. Mosely, G.Walker, L. Chambers and… no Dean. Not even an initial. The lift chimes as the doors swing open and Castiel walks in, trying to calm himself. There are perfectly good reasons why Dean’s name might not be on the mailboxes. Perhaps they have a terrible super. Maybe he collects his mail elsewhere. Maybe Dean is actually his middle name and he has an embarrassing name like… Lorenzo and doesn’t go by it. Maybe Castiel is remembering wrong and Dean’s apartment is on a different floor.

When he steps out of the lift he recognizes the hallway though. The dark carpet and the cream walls. The door Dean had pressed him against and kissed him... He scents the air but there is not so much as a stale lingering note of Dean. Traces of beta and alpha scents, but not Dean’s.

Panic wells inside Castiel and he swallows, trying to calm himself, but Dean’s not here. Hasn’t been in weeks. Maybe longer.

_He’s gone._

Inside his ribcage Cas’s heart clenches painfully and he feels out of breath all of a sudden.

Since finding out about the pregnancy, Castiel has been focusing on sorting out his life. Arranging his stay with Anna, looking into how quickly he can transfer colleges, if he needs extra credit, getting references and referrals from his favorite professors… He has been trying to keep a level head when he thinks of Dean, not considering his reaction or what might happen after, just cutting off his thoughts at _‘I need to tell him’_ and leaving it at that.

It is not until he is pressed against the wall outside Dean’s old apartment that he realizes a part of him had been hopeful of… something. He knows they are not some magical truemating, but they are obviously well suited physically, and there is something about Dean, some kindness Castiel has felt despite how little they know one another, that had him thinking that if Dean wished to court him, he would like that. Would like to be near Dean, get to know him outside of his heat or rut, see if he is the man Castiel thinks he might be.

But he’s _gone_ and Castiel doesn’t even know his _name._

For the first time Castiel honestly regrets running. If he’d stayed, talked to Dean in the aftermath of their initial mating, maybe things would have been resolved between them amicably and his life would have gone back to normal. Or maybe he would have realized that there was something more than just biology between them. It might have ended terribly, but perhaps if he’d stayed wrapped up in Dean’s arms when he’d woken up that morning aching and sated, he would have a mate and a home for himself and his child instead of an airplane ticket to his sister’s and an uncertain future.

He knows he can manage by himself, he’s never been the sort to depend on others, but he doesn’t _want to._ He wants to share this burden with someone, with Dean, but his own fears and selfishness have driven him away. He should have tried to find Dean as soon as he told Balthazar. It was stupid to put it off until the day he’s meant to leave. Maybe he’d been afraid if he gave Dean time, he’d convince him to stay… 

_“You smell like home,”_ Dean had told him when the red faded from his eyes and they were twisted together in his bed. In their nest. Their mating bower. _“You smell like everything.”_ Later Castiel had lashed out because that didn’t make any _sense_ , they were _strangers,_ but deep inside Dean had felt the same to him. Familiar. Safe. Home.

That’s what a mate is. Family.

The elevator chimes and Castiel’s head snaps up as the doors open. He swipes at his eyes and sets his face into something neutral.

An old woman with a cane walks out, plastic shopping bag hooked on one arm. Her eyes widen in shock as she takes in Castiel, nostrils flaring as she scents his no doubt very obvious distress. For a moment she looks worried, like a kindly grandmother, but then she stiffens and glares. Castiel recognizes her a moment later. Remembers that cane rapping against Dean’s door, her sharp voice ushering them inside when they would have happily fucked each other’s brains out in the doorway.

He clears his throat. “I’m looking for Dean.”

She purses her lips and eyes him mistrustfully. “You’re his omega. The one that broke that poor boy’s heart _three times_ last I counted _._ ”

Castiel doesn’t bother trying to explain. “Please. It’s important.”

She shakes her head and crosses towards her door, fishing in her handbag for her keys. “He didn’t leave a forwarding address,” she tells him, turning her back on him. Haughty.

Castiel crosses the hall after her, but stops at a respectful distance. “I just need to speak to him.”

She turns the key in her lock but pauses and looks at him over her shoulder. “Why?” she asks. “You want to play him around some more?”

“I need to tell him I’m pregnant,” Castiel says. Blunt and honest. “That’s all. He has a right to know.”

Her eyes skip down over his body searchingly and she scents the air again. “Is it actually his?” she asks skeptically.

Castiel ignores the insult. Nods. “Yes.”

For a long moment she just looks at him and Castiel struggles not to fidget under that judgmental stare. “Wait here,” she tells him then steps into her apartment, pulling the door behind her.

After a minute he starts to think she’s not coming back, but then the door opens again. She’s got a little address book in one hand and a pen and a piece of notepaper in the other. Her expression is still stony though.

“I’ll give you his number, and a week to call him and tell him what he needs to hear,” she says. “Otherwise I’ll tell him myself.”

Reaching out a hand for the paper, Castiel nods quickly in agreement. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

She hums like she doesn’t quite trust him but hands over the slip of paper. “Don’t disappoint me,” she says. “The last thing that boy needs is to hear he’s gonna be a father from me of all people.”

“I won’t,” Castiel promises, meaning it. He carefully folds the paper and tucks it in his pocket. “Thank you.”

She gives him a wary nod and then closes her door on him.

Castiel stands there for a moment, considers pulling out his phone and calling Dean right now – but... His heart is still beating unevenly and anxiety and nerves have him more or less twitching in his own skin. He _will_ call Dean. Just… not right away.

He’ll think it through, unlike this impulsive visit, plan what he needs to say and prepare himself. That’s the smart thing to do.

On the walk back to Balthazar’s he keeps a tight grip of the paper in his pocket, scared he will lose it or something. His bags are sitting right where he left them. The house is silent and empty. It is still hours until his flight, but he’s ready to… not be here anymore. He calls a cab and heads out to the airport early. Dean’s number burns a hole in his pocket but beyond reassuring himself that it’s still there, he doesn’t let himself pull it out. The last thing he wants to do is crumble and call Dean to tell him he’s pregnant. Delivering such news from an airport lounge just as he’s about to fly halfway across the country seems awful. It will seem less like he is running away again if he calls Dean already settled into Anna’s.

He buys a glossy magazine and a trashy paperback from an overpriced shop in the terminal and tries to distract himself until his plane boards by reading some murder-mystery-thriller. It’s not very good though and he keeps having to re-read passages. Finally his flight is called and he’s herded aboard with the rest of the passengers of the crowded flight.  Thankfully he’s seated next to a young beta and an elderly omega he thinks is her grandmother and beyond polite nods as they settle into their seats, there is no attempt at conversation.

Castiel manages to restrain himself until they are safely in the air and there is no way he can do anything stupid to pull the slip of paper from his pocket and unfold it.

A mobile number and a name are scrawled across it. Castiel stares.

_Dean_ _Winchester_.

_Winchester_. That’s his mate’s name.

A foggy memory surfaces, from the hospital. Castiel remembers Dean leaning over him, an ID dangling from his scrubs. _Dr. Winchester._

He traces his fingers over the looping cursive for a long time, then carefully refolds the paper and tucks it safely into his wallet.


	15. Chapter 15

Dean thinks he’s starting to get over Castiel.

It’s small, but he thinks his senses are staring to return. He notices someone’s scent in the elevator, some neighbor from one of the other floors. And… It smells good. An omega for sure. Not in heat or anything, but sweet and just… good. Nice. He takes a few deep lungfuls and savors it. It’s been months since he felt any spark of interest, of attraction.

It reminds him of Castiel, but he can hardly trust his memories. It’s sharper though. _Maybe not an omega_ , he thinks. _Maybe a beta?_

A few months ago, before Castiel, he would have been able to tell easily. The sharp olfactory senses of an alpha could break down and identify a scent from just the barest whiff. So his uncertainly is depressing, but it’s still better than nothing. At least he notices… _something._ Whoever the mystery beta or omega is, their sweet scent has the alpha inside him stirring for the first time in months. He almost wants to follow the trail, track it back to whoever owns it. He doesn’t of course, just gets out on his floor and heads into his apartment. But it’s a good sign that he’d wanted to he decides. The first hint that his null status isn’t permanent.

For the rest of the evening he’s tense and restless, on edge like he’s coming up to a rut or something, but he welcomes it. It’s a sign his hormones are slowly returning to normal, another indicator that he’s not broken permanently.

His dinner tastes a little fresher, brighter than his breakfast had. It’s not quite a chore to finish his plate. Or at least it seems that way. Afterwards he calls Sam and gets an update on boring classes and an update on his horrifying foray into vegetarianism, then checks his email and watches a little tv. When he strips to shower before bed, something pricks the back of his nose. He scents himself carefully, pressing his nose to his shoulder and inhaling deeply, trying to see if his there’s any hint of his old alpha musk there. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but he thinks… maybe there is.

That night he has a wet dream. Sure it’s Castiel he has pinned beneath him, his estranged mate kissing him and moaning sweetly as Dean sinks into that slick heat he remembers too well - but in his dream he _knots_ him. He wakes up to find himself humping the mattress, a mess of come all over the sheets and the throbbing ache of his knot bulging at the base of his dick. He reaches down and grabs it, fat and heavy in his palm. It’s embarrassing how intensely relived he is. He’s still capable, still an alpha is the basest sense of the word.

Maybe he’s not over Castiel, but he’s not broken, he’s getting better.

It’s early, not even six, and he doesn’t have a shift today, but instead of sleeping in he shoves his dirty sheets in the wash and pulls on a pair of sweats to go for a run while the machine goes through its cycle. He catches that sweet scent again, stronger this time – (or maybe he’s just scenting it clearer this morning?) - and his good mood improves. Then with a few miles down his stomach starts growling at him and he realizes that he’s actually _hungry_. As in legitimately craving something fried and salty and delicious. Bacon. Eggs. Toast with lots of butter. His mouth actually starts to water.

 

* * *

  

The moment Castiel sets foot in his sister’s home something in him seems to unwind and relax, some tension he hadn’t even been aware he was carrying around. Her apartment is spacious and elegantly furnished, not that he expected any different, but it is also patently a _home._ There are framed pictures on the walls and shelves overflowing with books and random knickknacks and keepsakes and the entire place is permeated with the familiar, comforting scent of his sister.

The guest room has a big soft bed and with his clothes packed away in the wardrobe and cupboards, and his laptop and assorted papers and books neatly arranged on the desk, it feels almost homely. Comfortable at least.

Anna works long hours but stays with him the first three days after he arrives. She catches him up on the details of every aspect of her life, who she has dated, the office politics going on at her place of work and who of their mutual acquaintances from back home have married, mated or had children recently. They cook together in her well stocked kitchen and she takes him out to see a few touristy spots in town, and drives him to an appointment at Washington State to discuss mid-year admission.

He makes no mention on _why_ he has suddenly moved across the country, and the woman he speaks to doesn’t seem to pick up on his pregnant scent, which he thinks a good thing. He is sure he capable of completing another semester. He’ll be 8 months gone when he sits his finals, but that still gives him a months’ grace. It will be uncomfortable, but he sees no reason to sit around and do nothing until the child is born.

Being out of Balthazar’s house seems to agree with him. The morning sickness he had been suffering from and the headaches are much milder. He sleeps easier. Anna doesn’t smell like an interloper, or intruder the way Balthazar had, she smells like family. His instincts don’t tell him to be on guard and wary of her.

He programs Dean’s number into his phone, then googles him and finds an abandoned facebook page that is mostly locked up but that tells him that Dean is only a few years his senior and that he went to college in Kansas and med school in California.

Whenever he has a spare moment he imagines what he will say to him when he calls, but no matter how he practices and plans for it, thinking over all the possible reactions Dean might have to the news and how he should respond… he is too scared to actually call him.

Five days pass, then six, and suddenly it has almost been a week and he knows that Dean’s neighbor will call him the next day regardless of if he finds his courage or not. Anna has left already for work when he wakes up, but there’s warm coffee in the machine and he sits and has a cup. Through the windows the day looks bright and clear and Castiel decides he will go for a walk and then when he gets back and it’s a reasonable hour, he will call Dean.

He showers and dresses carefully, most certainly not dawdling and wasting time, and then heads out and down onto the street. There is a park only ten or so minutes’ walk from Anna’s building and he heads there. People bustle on their way to work in suits and jackets and Castiel weaves between them, his thoughts on Dean and the conversation he has been obsessing over all week.

He walks around the park, then stops and sits on a bench and looks at some ducks for a long time, and then walks around the park again before finally admitting that he can’t really drag ‘his walk’ out any longer. Dragging his feet, he makes his way back towards Anna’s. His stomach is in knots. Once he gets back to her apartment he will have no excuse, he will have to call Dean.

He’s only a block from her building when he seems something delicious. A diner. It’s still breakfast time but looking at the place he suddenly has a craving for a cheeseburger and french-fries. Maybe a milkshake. And he hasn’t eaten breakfast, so it’s easy to convince himself that it’s fine. That’s it’s completely reasonable for him to stop and eat before he goes back to Anna’s and calls Dean. He is pregnant after all. Cravings are perfectly understandable.

He crosses the busy side walk and lets himself in. Inside it’s warm and smells like bacon and waffles and other delicious things. Pastries. Spice and fruit. He scents the air as he makes his way to the counter. There’s something else, something familiar. In a glass cabinet a row of pies sit under a warmer. Castiel smiles, understanding.

The spice of the apple one, cinnamon and nutmeg, smells even better than the muffins at the old coffee shop, almost like Dean. He huffs a soft laugh to himself. The fact that he has developed some strange attraction to baked good is perhaps the weirdest side effect of the entire mess he has ended up embroiled in.

Through the long serving hatch into the kitchen he can see a man at a grill flipping something. Eggs maybe. He nods at Castiel in greeting and smiles, then turns and calls out to someone over his shoulder. “Fresh face out front sugar!”

With the thick grease and salt smells of the breakfast food, it’s impossible to tell if the man is a beta or an alpha. The wink he throws at Cas combined with his broad shoulders makes Cas think alpha though. “Andy’ll be with you in a minute if you wanna take a seat?” he suggests.

There is a smattering of customers across the diner, solitary figures at the counter and couples and friends at booths and tables. Castiel lets his feet guide him and slides into a booth at random. To his stomach’s delight, the laminated menu in the middle of the table tells him burgers and fries are an all day special. A minute later a flushed omega with dark hair and ‘Andrea’ on her name tag appears to take his order.

She makes some light-hearted comment about having a healthy appetite when he orders a cheeseburger and fries but then tells him that her husband’s burgers are so good that she’d eat them morning, noon, and night if she could.

There is a little wait for his meal, but Castiel entertains himself staring out the window at the bustling morning crowd. His burger when it arrives has his mouth watering and he finds himself having to stifle moans of enjoyment as he works his way through it. The fries are good too. Hot and just the right amount of crunch. After he’s finished he orders a slice of the delicious smelling pie. The burly cook brings it out to him while Andrea is over at another table.

Up close Cas can tell he’s an alpha, and mated. “Good to see a man with an appetite!” he tells Cas, setting down the plate and lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Wish Andrea’d let me have burgers and pie for breakfast.”

The pie is wonderful, the pastry rich and buttery, the apples sweet and well spiced, but it makes Cas’s chest ache and sticks in his throat. It’s ridiculous how a _pie_ of all things could have him feeling so morose, but even though the sweet sugar scent of it is cloying, the underlying tart green apple and soft nutmeg _do_ remind him of Dean for some reason.

Unbidden, sweeter memories he has of his brief time with him flit across his thoughts as he picks his way through the slice. He remembers being tucked in under Dean’s chin, using him as a warm alpha-shaped pillow during that long whirlwind mating-heat they'd shared. Remembers the rumble of his voice where Castiel’s face rested against his chest in the quiet after their mating. _“Gonna be so good to you Cas,”_ he’d promised.

Castiel pulls out his phone and stares at it for a time, then keeps nibbling at the cooling pie. The breakfast rush seems to be over, there are only a few people still lingering over their meals and sipping coffee. Laughter drifts out from the kitchen. When he glances over Castiel can see Andrea and the alpha cook who must be her husband smiling and whispering to each other. He wonders how they met. They are mated, alpha and omega, and they are more or less dripping contentment and happiness. Had they fallen into that easily? Or had they had to work at it? Where the fears that had shaped Castiel’s life since he presented misguided?

He remembers his mother’s brittle laugh and his grandfather Lucifer’s bitterness. His shunned uncle Gabriel. There are no happy contented omegas in his family. None that he knows. They all put up prideful facades of happiness in public, but Castiel has always known the truth of those matings. Has known that to be an omega mated to an alpha is to be owned, controlled by your biology and instincts. Or so he had thought when he decided that as a teenager.

Perhaps his bitter childhood has blinded him to the truth though. Maybe being mated to an alpha isn’t the prison he has always feared.

Through the smudged plate glass of the diner, Castiel see Dean.

He stares in dull disbelief. Dean’s hair is mussed from the wind and his cheeks are flushed. He’s wearing gray sweatpants and a plain shirt dark with sweat like he’s been running. There are dark circles under his eyes. Castiel stares some more, convinced he is seeing things but Dean keeps coming closer and there’s no doubt that it’s him. Castiel’s breath mists against the window as Dean walks straight past, so close Cas could touch him if not for the glass.

He dumps some money on the table, grabbing bills from his wallet blindly and probably leaving a ridiculous tip, and then he’s shouldering his way back outside and jogging after Dean. The sidewalk is still busy but Castiel weaves through the crowd like he’s on a mission. He doesn’t know _how_ this is happening, what Dean is doing in Washington of all places, but he’s glad. It feels like a sign, like Castiel is finally on the right track.

To his shock he tails Dean into Anna’s building and catches up to him in the foyer waiting on the elevators. He’s staring straight ahead, hasn’t noticed Castiel yet. Tinny bass echoes out of his earphones and he’s humming quietly along with what sounds like some sort of rock music. Castiel flounders behind him, unsure. The lift chimes and Dean waves at the woman inside and pulls out one of his earbuds. “Morning Mrs Tran,” he says and Castiel silently hyperventilates three feet behind him at the aching familiarity of that voice.

The woman smiles. “Doctor,” she replies, giving him a regal nod as she steps out.

Dean politely waits off to one side before stepping into the empty lift. The way his face just _collapses_ as he finally turns and sees Castiel answers the question as to whether or not he’d scented him. Castiel steps in after him before the doors can close, but stays on the opposite of the lift, as far from him as possible.

“Dean,” he says, at a loss.

Dean’s mouth opens and closes. His eyes seem greener than Cas remembers, what with how wide they are. _“Castiel?”_

“I… I need to talk to you,” Castiel tells him, skipping straight to the point.

“Did you _follow me here?”_ Dean asks in shock and maybe anger - Castiel can’t tell and his scent isn’t giving away any clues…

In fact Castiel can’t smell Dean at all.

Nothing.

Just the faint salt and skin smell of fresh sweat. Which doesn’t make any sense. Even if he’d lathered himself in deodorant, given how he’s sweated through his shirt, Castiel should be able to smell him. He takes a deeper breath, but impossibly, he can’t smell the sweaty alpha – his _mate –_ right in front of him. In a small enclosed space. His own nervousness is suddenly eclipsed by a new anxiety. Something is wrong.

“Are you sick?” he blurts.

Dean’s face shutters abruptly, closes off.

“What do you want?” he asks instead of answering the question.

“It’s… not something we should discuss in an elevator,” Castiel tells him.

Dean purses his lips and stares over Castiel’s shoulder. It’s only when the lift chimes and arrives at its destination, (the same floor as Anna’s apartment Castiel notes), that he speaks. “You can have five minutes,” he says tightly and strides past Castiel and into the hallway. “My place is this way.”

Castiel nods even though Dean is refusing to so much as look at him and falls in behind him. Dean’s apartment is right across from his sister’s. Despite his anxiety and how strange Dean is acting, Castiel thinks that must be another sign. Surely. What are the chances?

The apartment is quite different to Anna’s, more open plan, sparsely decorated and clearly freshly painted. Dean leaves him hovering awkwardly near the front door and heads into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the fridge.

After draining half of it in one go, Dean finally deigns to look at him.

“So I’m listening,” he says, voice cold.

Castiel doesn’t know what to say. Something is wrong with Dean. He carries no scent, didn’t notice his own mate standing right next to him and he clearly hasn’t realized that Castiel is pregnant. That was one advantage to meeting face to face – Castiel had thought he wouldn’t actually have to explain, just assumed his scent would do all the talking for him.

“I’m… sorry,” he says. “I’ve treated you… badly. Blamed you for things that weren’t your fault.”

Dean finishes his water. “What do you want?” he asks. “You didn’t come all the way to DC to apologize.”

“I’m staying with my sister,” Castiel admits. “She lives, well, she’s your neighbor apparently.”

“What?” Dean grunts.

“Ah, Anna Milton? In 12c?” Castiel jerks a thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of her apartment.

“The red-head beta?” Dean asks.

Castiel nods.

“Your _sister?_ ”

“I didn’t realize. I got your number of Mrs Mosely in Palo Alto, but I… I’ve been putting off calling you. I had no idea you’d even left California.”

“So this,” Dean gestures between them. “This is all serendipity?”

“I suppose?”

Dean sighs and rubs at his eyes like he’s tired.  “So you’re sorry,” he says after a moment. “Was there anything else?”

“I left my husband,” Castiel blurts, holding up his hand with his bare finger.

For the first time something a little less hostile flicks across Dean’s face. “Okay,” he says.

“It’s complicated and if you want I’ll explain, but we weren’t _really_ married.”

Dean’s face closes off once more. “What?”

“It was, an arrangement. A marriage on paper, no more.”

“What like a green card thing?” Dean asks.

“Something like that.”

Dean purses his lips. “So all that stuff you spouted about your ‘vows before god’? That was all bull?” The hurt there is plain, even from across the room. Even without scent to confirm it.

Castiel doesn’t try and defend himself, just explains as best, as honestly as he can. “I was scared,” he says. “I’ve never… I never wanted a mate. An alpha. The idea of belonging to someone, of being owned…” he shrugs awkwardly, hoping Dean understands what he’s trying to say.

Dean looks lost. “I never wanted to _own_ you,” he says sadly. “That’s the last thing I wanted.”

It hurts to see his mate in pain, to know Castiel caused it. His omega howls under his skin, desperate to run into Dean’s arm and make him better. Fix him. It’s impossible to ignore and Castiel walks over to him. “Can I?” he asks awkwardly, hesitating a few feet from Dean, lifting his arms.

For a long moment Dean is very still, tense and poised, but then he nods slowly.

Castiel puts his arms to his shoulders and presses into him. Dean lets him, but doesn’t raise his arms. He smells of salt and nothing. “Why can’t I smell you?” Castiel asks quietly, afraid.

Dean sighs and turns into him slightly. “I lost it,” he says. “After.”

Castiel knows instantly what he is saying, even though he has so carefully _not_ said it. “Me?” he asks anyway, praying Dean will correct him.

Dean shrugs, a small careless movement like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t matter.

Castiel clutches at him, pressing closer and burying his face against his shoulder, instinctively seeking comfort from the thing that is gone. Dean’s scent. Something with claws tears at Castiel from the inside. He thinks back to those lists on the internet, those long lists of symptoms. He hadn’t given it any thought, what _Dean_ might have been suffering. And he remembers now, how pregnancy can sooth pining sickness, trick the body into thinking its mate is nearby. Their bond was never weak, it was just as strong as he’d originally thought. And he’d rejected Dean, utterly.

The shape of what must have happened to Dean bubbles up in this mind. Castiel feels young and stupid and cruel.

He’s broken Dean, broken _them_ , and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

 

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

Castiel’s shaking minutely in his arms. Dean can scent his pain, his  _guilt_. But it’s a soft, ghostly thing. Like Cas is standing across the room instead of pressed in tight and warm against him.

It’s obvious now that the scent he’d picked up around the building, the one that had him thinking maybe he was finally getting over his estranged mate, wasn’t just  _like_ Castiel, it  _was_ Castiel. With his dulled senses Cas smells slightly different. Sharper. Not so soft. Dean hadn’t recognized him. Ingrained instinct has him leaning closer and trying to scent him properly, but it’s still muddled and off.

Dean doesn’t know what to do.

A part of him had thought that Castiel might be able to ‘cure’ him, but he’s clinging tightly to Dean and nothing’s changed. Mostly he’s just tired. Normally he’d be sleeping right now since he’d been on duty the night before. He doesn’t want to do whatever it is he and Cas are doing. He thought he’d left this mess in California.

He should probably ask Cas to leave and get some rest, clear his head, but there’s this anxious feeling in his guts like if he lets him walk out the door he’ll never see him again even though he’s apparently living right across the damn hallway. It’s just stubborn alpha instinct - suspicion since Cas has ran out on him so many times before - but he can’t shake it off.

“You’re tired,” Cas says, stepping back a little and looking up at him.

“Yeah a bit,” Dean admits.

Cas nods. “I’ll leave you to your rest.” Dean’s arm shoots out and grips his shoulder before he can stop himself. Cas turns his head and looks at Dean’s hand. “Or… I could stay….?” he suggests hesitantly.

It’s hard to get what he’s feeling into words so Dean just nods. Castiel relaxes a little, like he’s relieved, but Dean doesn’t let himself read anything into that. It’s already strange, (and wonderful), to see Cas acting so… so cautious. Like he’s worried about Dean, like he  _cares_.

Dean leaves Cas on the big new couch with the remote to the big new TV in his hand and retreats to the shower to wash his run off. The entire time his ears are pricked for the sound of footsteps on the floorboards or the slam of front door, but when he emerges ten minutes later with a towel around his hips and his hair dripping, Cas is still on couch, right where he left him. Dean pretends he wasn’t panicking.

Cas fidgets, darting looks up at him and blushing like he’s never seen someone without a shirt before. “I can stay,” he says again. “For a few hours. I don’t have plans. So… you should sleep? I’ll be here. Unless you want me to go?”

Dean shakes his head. “No. Stay.” He forces himself to continue. “We can talk more. Later. If you want.”

“Thank you,” Cas says, like he’s touched, like Dean’s agreed to a lot more than letting him sit on his couch and watch his cable.

It’s all too weird so Dean jerks a nod and pads to his bedroom. Castiel’s eyes are heavy on his back. He leaves the door ajar so he can hear the television and movement out in the rest of the apartment. Every time Cas gets up to go to the bathroom, (which is surprisingly often), or get a glass of water from the kitchen, his heart races and he half expects to hear the front door instead.

He’s tried though, and tense or not, eventually he slips into an uneasy sleep. When he wakes up the light has changed and he can tell a few hours have past. The apartment is silent and utterly still. No television, no nothing. Naturally, Dean panics.

_He’s left me again,_ he thinks, absolutely certain and furious at himself for hoping. He’s such a fucking  _idiot_ for not realizing this was going to happen. It’s only when he jerks upright to go and confirm that he’s alone that he belatedly notices Cas lying next to him. He’s still in his jeans and shirt, but he’s there, in Dean’s bed. Dean’s flailing around has half-woken him and Cas murmurs under his breath and reaches up blindly, tugging him back down to the mattress. Once Dean’s horizontal again, he wastes no time in curling up against him, draping himself half across him. He murmurs again, happily this time, and puffs a little sigh into Dean’s shoulder.

It’s probably just his imagination, but Dean thinks he smells sweeter. He’s definitely not imagining the way his heart is racing and how his inner alpha is alive and rearing under his skin, basically running around in delighted circles at having its mate tangled up close, safe and happy-smelling. Some line is being crossed and Dean knows he’s just going to make things harder if Cas burns him again, but it feels so good having him in his arms.

He pulls him in closer and lets himself really look at his mate, just drink him in for a minute while Cas is unaware. The soft dark nest of his hair, the way his brows are furrowed a little even in sleep, the sharp line of his jaw, the graceful curve of his throat and the tempting pout of his lips. Dean had known his mate was gorgeous, he’s been haunted by those bright eyes ever since that night in the ER so long ago, and he remembers in excruciating detail the mad pull Cas had on him in his heat, but he’s not drunk on heatscent now, in fact can hardly smell him at all. This is Cas stripped bare of chemicals and pheromones. Of the pull of an omega over an alpha. Dean still wants him though. Still wants him so much. Just looking at him hurts.

So he closes his eyes. Sleeps.

*

Dean wakes up to the rich perfume of his mate’s scent. Sweet and content. Warm and soft in his arms. He hums happily and pulls him close to scent him, stroke his hands over him, slide his hands up under his shirt and touch his skin. He smells amazing, so much better than Dean remembers.

Castiel blinks up at him, yawns around a smile, then pulls his fingers through Dean’s hair and rubs against his neck. When he starts purring his contentment, that soft rumble from high in his chest, Dean feels like he might burn up with how happy and proud and perfect it feels to have his mate in his arms like this.

“I can smell you,” Cas tells him and Dean finally wakes up enough to realize that he can smell Cas –  _really_  smell him. That sweet scent that resonates down to his bones.  _Mate_ and _Cas_  and  _home_ and  _mine._

“smell you too,” Dean mumbles against the soft skin just below Cas’s ear, unable to resist nipping lightly as he draws deep lungfuls of beautiful matescent off him.

Cas moans and Dean freezes as his scent deepens with desire. He feels himself respond, feels his blood pound and his teeth dig into Castiel’s skin, the urge to mark and claim rising up strong and sudden and heady. His teeth scrape against Cas’s skin and he arches into Dean, stretching out the length of his neck for him, offering. “ _Dean,”_ he says, voice rough and needy.

It’s as if Dean’s woken up from a long foggy dream, his alpha rising up from that hollow within him and buzzing under his skin. His mate is lying beneath him sweet with want and it’s been so  _long._ Dean wants him so much it hurts, wants to pull Castiel into his arms and breathe him in, break over him like a wave and twist them up so he can keep him wrapped up safe with him forever.

Arousal thickens in the air, teasing at his sharpened senses, but Castiel’s eyes are steady blue, not the blown out gold that Dean remembers from their heat-drunk matings. The need, the throb of his cock between his thighs – it’s sharp and potent almost like a rut, but Dean’s thoughts are clear. He knows Castiel is his for the taking, but hesitates, because if he’s not going to stay, if Castiel doesn’t want to be his  _always,_ he can’t do this again.

Castiel seems to sense his trepidation. “We don’t have to,” he says quietly. “We can wait.” He cups Dean’s cheek with a warm palm and Dean turns into him instinctively. “We probably  _should_ wait,” he  continues thoughtfully. “Make sure we want…  _this_ … before we…” he trails off awkwardly.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, even though his alpha is whining, insistent that his mate is  _right there_ and he should fuck him full, knot him and rub his stink all over him. Taste every inch of him, sink his teeth into his skin and leave marks for all to see. Claim him over and over until he can never leave him again. Make him  _Dean’s._ He shoves down at that and compromises. Pulls Castiel into his arms and shoves his face against his neck, breathing him in instead.

It takes forever to calm down, the curve of Cas’s  _perfect_ ass against his dick hardly helping, but eventually the tension bleeds out of him and is replaced with relief. Relief and hope. Maybe Cas really is serious about them trying for real. There’s no bitterness in his scent, no note of hesitation or deceit, just that perfect sweet green scent that makes Dean almost light-headed.

Cas’s breathing evens out and he goes boneless in Dean’s arms. He’s warm and wonderful and Dean feels like they are both exactly where they are supposed to be. He never wants to move. His eyes drift shut and he falls back into a doze.

He dreams of Castiel and for the first time in months doesn’t wake up to an aching hollow.

Instead he wakes up scenting Cas, dream and reality blurring sweetly. His mate is dozing but Dean is awake, curled up behind him, nose pressed into the curled hairs at the nape of his neck.  _Apple. Spice. Sweet. Cas._ But there’s something else as well, something weirdly familiar, something warmer and deeper. Dean huffs against him, drawing Cas’s scent deep in to his lungs, rolling it around his mouth and tasting it. It smells good. So good. Better than the intoxicating fertility of Cas’s heatscent even. Dean noses along Cas’s shoulder, nudging aside thin cotton and nipping and kissing his skin, luxuriating in it. Cas leans back against him, sighs.

Dean wants nothing more than to lay there with Castiel and never move again, but for some reason there’s a nagging discomfort tugging at his brain. He keeps thinking of the blankets and pillows in the spare room. The bed isn’t a proper nest and he needs to keep his mate warm and safe and comfortable. The compulsion is so strong he feels completely uneasy with it.

Castiel whines and reaches for him when he stands, but a quick kiss to his cheek and he’s sinking back down against the mattress, sleepy and sloe-eyed. “Back in a sec,” Dean tells him, then heads out in the hall, ignoring his mate’s annoyed sigh.

Away from Castiel his wits sharpen up, but the uncomfortable need to fetch more bedding doesn’t fade. Glancing back at Castiel alone on the bed with just the single pillow and duvet makes him feel positively anxious in fact. It takes him a few trips, but he ferries all the pillows and blankets and extra comforters to the bed. Castiel blinks up at him slowly, hair mussed and his shirt slipping off one shoulder, as Dean arranges them around him. Once he has them tucked in around his mate to his satisfaction he finally lets Cas pull him down to the bed again. The much softer bed. It’s warm under the blankets and slightly musty, but the sweet scent of happy omega and Dean’s own renewed alpha musk overpowers that easily.

Cas wriggles in his arms as Dean pulls him close and settles curled around him once more. He’s purring again, the soft vibration of it against Dean’s chest lulling him into shared contentment. Castiel’s scent flares up with happiness and that odd richness seems to grow fuller, heavy on Dean’s tongue like he can taste it. Absently he nibbles over Cas’s mating mark and rubs circles over his stomach.

Never, not even when they’d first mated, has Dean ever felt so utterly content. He’s satisfied on some primitive bone-deep level. For the first time in months he feels the bass rumble from under his ribs as his purr joins his mate’s softer tone. Castiel’s grows louder in response and he wiggles back, closer. Everything is perfect. Dean has his sweet mate in his arms, in his bed. In his  _nest._  He smoothes circles over Cas’s stomach mindlessly, nuzzles against him and breathes in his scent. Each inhalation is like a slow stroke down his spine, has his alpha gleeful and smug.

_Mine,_ he thinks.  _Mine mine mine._

Finally Castiel is as much Dean’s as Dean has been Castiel’s.

He’s not sure how long they lay like that when he suddenly realizes what he’s smelling on Cas’s skin.

Himself. He’s smelling himself.

Heart racing he pushes himself up to stare down at Castiel in shock. It seems so  _obvious_ now. The blooming scent of him, the slight thickening low between his hips. “You’re pregnant!” he blurts.

Castiel chews on his bottom lip and stares up at him in consternation. After a moment he nods cautiously.

“It’s mine,” Dean says because he can tell. Knows instinctively that his mate is carrying  _his_  child, can smell it on him.

Castiel nods again, looking less hesitant, something that might be a smile hiding in the twist of his lips. Dean kisses him, kisses him deep and long.  _“Cas,”_  he says in between messy kisses. “Cas cas cas...” and there should be more there but that seems to be all his tongue-tied incredulous brain can manage.

Yesterday he had nothing, didn’t even have himself. Today he has everything. Dean thinks maybe he should be careful, that he should make Castiel prove that he’s not going to run away again, maybe even punish him, but curled up with him things seem very simple all of a sudden.

Cas was scared.

Dean remembers the acrid stink of his fear hanging in the air of his apartment after he ran from their first mating. Cas never set out to hurt anyone and it’s plain how guilty he is over what Dean suffered. Even without his full senses Dean had been able to scent his pain and distress when Cas realized Dean’s scent was gone, that he was null.

And does the mess behind them matter? What’s the point of hanging onto bitterness and anger?

Cas is his mate and they are going to have a baby. There’s so much Dean doesn’t know about him, but he knows he’s in love with him and from the way Cas is looking up at him, the tentative buzz of his scent and the way he’s very carefully brushing his fingertips along Dean’s cheek, he thinks Cas feels the same way.

“I missed you,” Cas tells him, quiet like he’s embarrassed. “I dreamt about you. I wanted to go to you the moment I realized…” He frowns and corrects himself. “No, that’s wrong. I wanted to go to you the moment I left you, the first time. It was so hard to stay away.” Cas bites at his lip for a moment. “I wanted to stay. I wanted to know you.”

With a deep sigh, Dean lets go of his lingering doubt and hurt. He still finds himself asking though: “You’re staying this time though? Gonna let me know you?”

Cas nods. “Yes,” he says, fierce and sure.

The last wavering uncertainty in Dean’s heart crumbles. He leans down and presses his lips to Castiel’s, kisses him sweet and careful. Cas sighs into him. His hands slide warm up and down Dean’s back, across his shoulders. The air between them grows warm and heady with desire but they keep kissing for a long, long time. There’s no desperate heat or chemical pull between them. It’s just good. Kissing Castiel is warm and wet and  _good_.

It builds to more though. Slowly. Dean wants to worship his mate, wants to kiss every perfect inch of him and show him how much he adores him, how happy he is to have him with him again. So he does. Castiel tastes even better than he remembers, and the way he gasps and moans as Dean licks and sucks at him where he’s sticky and sweet is the best kind of encouragement. Dean coaxes an orgasm out of him easily, feels him clench and pulse around his tongue and his fingers and then laps at him till he’s shaking and panting all over again.

With his mate’s slick all over his face, the air thick with his omega scent –  _mated, **dean’s** , happy_ – and Cas’s breathy moans in his ear, there’s no doubt that Dean’s alpha is back, that the last cobwebs have been shaken out. The base of his cock aches with need and he asks: “Can I?”

“Yes,” Cas tells him, breathless. “Yes I want you to.”

When Dean finally sinks into him Cas pulls him close with deceptive strength and kisses him deeply. “Dean,” he says. “Oh Dean.” For a while he bucks and whines, tries to get Dean to take him harder, faster, but Dean loves him and their baby is growing inside him and all Dean wants to do is press into him long and slow, kiss him and touch him, bury himself as deep as he can get and just grind there where he’s warm and tight. He pulls his mate to his finish with a hand on his dick and Castiel comes shuddering, panting into Dean’s kisses, fingers twisted in his hair and his legs hiked up around his waist.  

When he pulls out without finishing Cas whines, but all Dean does is turn him on his side so he can slot in behind him and press back in. A few rolls of his hips and he’s gone, knot swelling and locking them together in the sweetest ache. Castiel curls and sings and twists around him. Dean buries his face against his neck and breathes in the sweet smell of him.

“I didn’t know it could be like that,” Cas tells him a little later. “I thought… knotting always seemed so violent.”

“No hormones messing with us right now Cas,” Dean reminds him. “And I can smell my kid in you, it’s making my alpha’s all sappy and protective.” He runs a hand up along Cas’s flank and presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”

“I don’t think you could even if you tried,” Cas says softly. “I don’t think you could hurt anyone Dean Winchester.” It sounds like an apology and a promise all at once.

 

* * *

  

The obnoxious ringtone of Dean’s phone wakes Castiel, some guitar riff that’s vaguely familiar. Dean sits up and reaches for the bedside table. Castiel follows him across the bed, clinging to his warmth, frowning and huffing in annoyance at the disturbance. After knocking a few things off the table and some swearing, Dean snatches it up and blearily answers.

“ ’lo?” There’s a pause as the person on the line answers. “Oh hey Mrs Moseley,” Dean says, sounding confused.

Castiel only pays half attention, instead focusing on making a comfortable pillow out of his mate’s lap. The nest Dean built around them last night smells of them, of omega and alpha blended together into something wonderful. Castiel sighs and shuts his eyes, one of Dean’s thighs warm under his cheek. A hand presses down against his head, fingers running carefully through his hair. He snuggles a little closer.

“Yeah, yeah I know,” Dean says in the phone. “He’s right here. With me.” Castiel can hear his smile.

 

***

**

*

THE END

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That last picture is my favourite of pax's illustrations. ugh, so adorable.
> 
> I thought about writing more to wrap up loose ends completely, but this felt like a good place to end things. In case you are wondering:
> 
> * Mrs Moseley makes Dean and Cas's Christmas card list permanently.
>   
> 
> * Balthazar totally marries Bela, since she's 100% on board with Balthazar's scheme, except they're already banging and they end up falling in lurve and both live happily, very sarcastically, ever after together in the lap of luxury and debauchery and no one stabs or drags either of them to hell.
>   
> 
> * Balthazar and Castiel don't talk for a few years but make up eventually. Dean thinks he's a pretentious douchebag though.
>   
> 
> * Castiel ends up getting a doctorate and later on an amazing job at the Smithsonian cause he's awesome.
>   
> 
> * Meg tries to get them to name the baby after her since she claims that she's the reason they finally met in the first place. At their wedding she gives an fabricated recounting of her and Cas's evening out that night as a toast. It involves strippers and 'The Unicorn Of True Love' and makes Cas groan a lot.
>   
> 
> * Mary and John come and visit and Mary makes Dean and Cas apple pie and they both get inappropriately emotional over cinnamon together or something. 
>   
> 
> * Sam and Jess end up moving to DC, mostly because Sam takes being an uncle very seriously, even buying a dog just so 'Dean and Cas's kid' can play with it. Jess rolls her eyes a lot but lets it sleep on the end of their bed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Castiel and Balthazar are married, but it's a marriage of convenience. They aren't actually in love or sleeping together. Dean doesn't know this, so the parts from his point of view very much treat the situation as a love triangle. 
> 
> The dub con tag refers to both Dean and Castiel since there's heat sex that neither of them can really consent properly to.


End file.
